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I 


A  HISTORY  OF  ENGLISH 
ROMANTICISM  IN  THE 
EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 


BY 


HENRY  A.    BEERS 

Autkorof'A  Suburban  Pastoral," ''ThelVaysc/YaU,"  etc. 


"  Was  unsterblich  im  Gesang  soil  leben 
Muss  im  Leben  untergehen."-  SCHILLER 


e^4e 


Ty.f  *    ^  ^  -  ' g* ^  ^ 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

1899 


3  7  g  5 


Copyright,  1898, 

BV 

HENRY  HOLT  &  CO. 


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THE   MERSHON   COMPANY  PRESS, 
RAHWAY,   N.   J. 


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PREFACE. 


Historians  of  French  and  German  literature  are 
accustomed  to  set  off  a  period,  or  a  division  of  their 
subject,    and    entitle    it    "Romanticism"    or    "the 
Romantic     School."       Writers    of    English    literary- 
history,  while   recognizing   the    importance   of   Eng- 
land's   share    in    this   great   movement    in    European 
letters,  have  not  generally  accorded  it  a  place  by  itself 
in  the  arrangement  of  their  subject-matter,  but  have 
treated  it  cursively,  as  a  tendency  present  in  the  work 
of  individual  authors;   and  have  maintained  a  simple 
*i     chronological  division  of  eras  into  the   "Georgian," 
, ^      the  "Victorian,"  etc.     The  reason  of  this  is  perhaps 
'       to  be  found  in  the  fact  that,  although  Romanticism  be- 
^^^^gan  earlier  in  England  than  on  the  Continent  and  lent 
J      quite   as  much   as   it   borrowed    in    the  international 
S      exchange  of   literary  commodities^   the  native  move- 
^       ment   was    more    gradual    and    scattered.     It    never 
«4      reached  so  compact  a  shape,  or  came  so  definitely  to 
a  head,  as  in  Germany  and  France.     There  never  was 
precisely   a    "romantic    school"  or   an   all-pervading 
romantic  fashion  in  England. 

There  is,  therefore,  nothing  in  English  correspond- 
ing to  Heine's  fascinating  sketch  "Die  Romantische 
Schule,"  or  to  Theophile  Gautier's  almost  equally 
fascinating  and  far   more  sympathetic  "  Histoire   du 


iv  Treface. 

Romantisme. "  If  we  can  imagine  a  composite  person- 
ality of  Byron  and  De  Quincey,  putting  on  record  his 
half  affectionate  and  half  satirical  reminiscences  of 
the  contemporary  literary  movement,  we  might  have 
something  nearly  equivalent.  For  Byron,  like  Heine, 
was  a  repentant  romanticist,  with  "radical  notions 
under  his  cap,"  and  a  critical  theory  at  odds  with  his 
practice;  while  De  Quincey  was  an  early  disciple  of 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge, — as  Gautier  was  of  Victor 
Hugo, — and  at  the  same  time  a  clever  and  slightly  mis- 
chievous sketcher  of  personal  traits. 

The  present  volume  consists,  in  substance,  of  a 
series  of  lectures  given  in  elective  courses  in  Yale 
College.  In  revising  it  for  publication  I  have  striven 
to  rid  it  of  the  air  of  the  lecture  room,  but  a  few 
repetitions  and  didacticisms  of  manner  may  have  in- 
advertently been  left  in.  Some  of  the  methods  and 
results  of  these,  studies  have  already  been  given  to 
the  public  in  "The  Beginnings  of  the  English 
Romantic  Movement,"  by  my  present  associate  and 
former  scholar.  Professor  William  Lyon  Phelps. 
Professor  Phelps'  little  book  (originally  a  doctorate 
thesis)  follows,  in  the  main,  the  selection  and  arrange- 
ment of  topics  in  my  lectures.  En  revanche  I  have 
had  the  advantage  of  availing  myself  of  his  inde- 
pendent researches  on  points  which  I  have  touched 
but  slightly;  and  particularly  of  his  very  full  treat- 
ment of  the  Spenserian  imitations. 

I  had  at  first  intended  to  entitle  the  book  "  Chapters 
toward  a  History  of  English  Romanticism,  etc.";  for, 
though  fairly  complete  in  treatment,  it  makes  no  claim 
to  being  exhaustive.  By  no  means  every  eighteenth- 
century  writer  whose  work  exhibirs  romantic  motives 


T'reface.  v 

is  here  passed  in  review.  That  very  singular  genius 
William  Blake,  e.  g.,  in  whom  the  influence  of  "Ossian," 
among  other  things,  is  so  strongly  apparent,  I  leave' 
untouched;  because  his  writings — partly  by  reason  of 
their  strange  manner  of  publication — were  without 
effect  upon  their  generation  and  do  not  form  a  link  in 
the  chain  of  literary  tendency. 

If  this  volume  should  be  favorably  received,  I  hope 
before  very  long  to  publish  a  companion  study  of 
English  romanticism  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

H.  A.  B. 

October,  1898. 


STATE  NORMAL  SCHOO 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     The  Subject  Defined, i 

II.     The  Augustans, 24 

III.  The  Spenserians, 62 

IV.  The  Landscape  Poets, 102 

V.    The  Miltonic  Group, 146 

VI.     The  School  of  Warton, 186 

VII.  The  Gothic  Revival,     .        .        -.        .        .        .221 

VIII.     Percy  and  the  Ballads 265 

IX.     OssiAN, 306 

X.     Thomas  Chatterton, 339 

XI.     The  German  Tributary, 374 


]wA|>.|i/fAf  crfifii' 


A    HISTORY   OF    ENGLISH 
ROMANTICISM. 

CHAPTER   I. 
Zbe  Subject  2)ef!ncJ>. 

To  attempt  at  the  outset  a  rigid  definition  of  the 
word  romanticism  would  be  to  anticipate  the  substance 
of  this  volume.  To  furnish  an  answer  to  the  question — 
What  is,  or  was,  romanticism?  or,  at  least,  What  is,  or 
was,  English  romanticism? — is  one  of  my  main  pur- 
poses herein,  and  the  reader  will  be  invited  to  examine 
a  good  many  literary  documents,  and  to  do  a  certain 
amount  of  thinking,  before  he  can  form  for  himself 
any  full  and  clear  notion  of  the  thing.  Even  then  he 
will  hardly  find  himself  prepared  to  give  a  dictionary 
definition  of  romanticism.  There  are  words  which 
connote  so  much,  which  take  up  into  themselves  so 
much  of  the  history  of  the  human  mind,  that  any  com- 
pendious explanation  of  their  meaning — any  definition 
which  is  not,  at  the  same  time,  a  rather  extended 
description — must  serve  little  other  end  than  to  sup- 
ply a  convenient  mark  of  identification.  How  can  we 
define  in  a  sentence  words  like  renaissance,  philistine, 
sentimentalism,  transcendental,  Bohemia,  preraphael- 
ite,  impressionist,  realistic?     Definitio  est  negatio.      It 


2  i/1  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

may  be  possible  to  hit  upon  a  form  of  words  which  will 
mark  romanticism  off  from  everything  else — tell  in  a 
clause  what  it  is  nofj  but  to  add  a  positive  content  to 
the  definition — to  tell  what  romanticism  is,  will  require 
a  very  different  and  more  gradual  process.* 

Nevertheless  a  rough,  working  definition  maybe  use- 
ful to  start  with.  /  Romanticism,  then,  in  the  sense  in 
which  I  shall  commonly  employ  the  word,  means  the 
reproduction  in  modern  art  or  literature  of  the  life 
and  thought  of  the  Middle  Ages,  /  Some  other  elements 
will  have  to  be  added  to  this  definition,  and  some 
modifications  of  it  will  suggest  themselves  from  time 
to  time.  It  is  provisional,  tentative,  elastic,  but  will 
serve  our  turn  till  we  are  ready  to  substiTute  a  better. 
It  is  the  definition  which  Heine  gives  in  his  brilliant 
little  book  on  the  Romantic  School  in  Germany,  f 
".All  Uie_poetry  of  the  Middle  Ages,"  he  adds,  "has 
a^certaia^defiaite^^haracter,  through_whichJt  differs 
from  the^Q£tj::y_Q£,the  Greeks  and_  Romans.  In  refer- 
ence to  this  difference,  the  former  is  called  Romantic, 
the  latter  Classic.     These  names,   however,  are  mis- 

*  Les  definitions  ne  se  posent  pas  a  priori,  si  ce  n'est  peutetre  en 
mathematiques.  En  histoire,  c'est  de  I'etude  patiente  de  la  refalite 
qu'elles  se  degagent  insensiblement.  Si  M.  Deschanel  ne  nous  a  pas 
donne  du  romantisme  la  definition  que  nous  reclamions  tout  i 
I'heure,  c'est,  a  vrai  dire,  que  son  enseignement  a  pour  objet  de 
preparer  cette  definition  meme.  Nous  la  trouverons  ou  elle  doit  etre, 
a  la  fin  du  cours  et  non  pas  a  debut. — F.  Brunetihe:  "  Classiques  et 
Rotnantiques,  Etudes  Critiques,"  Tome  III.  p.  296. 

f  Was  war  aber  die  romantische  Schule  in  Deutschland?  Sie  war 
nichts  anders  als  die  Wiedererweckung  der  Poesie  des  Mittelalters, 
wie  sie  sich  in  dessen  Liedern,  Bild-  und  Bauwerkcn,  in  Kunst  und 
Leben,  manifestiert  hatte. — Die  romantische  Schule  {Cotta  edition), 
p.  158. 


The  Subject  ^Defined.  $ 

leading,  and  have  hitherto  caused  the  most  vexatious 
confusion."  * 

Some  of  the  sources  of  this  confusion  will  be  con- 
sidered presently.  Meanwhile  the  passage  recalls  the 
fact  that  romantic,  when  used  as  a  term  in  literary 
nomenclature,  is  not  an  independent,  but  a  referential 
word.  It  implies  its  opposite^  the  classic;  and  the 
ingenuity  of  critics  has  been  taxed  to  its  uttermost 
to  explain  and  develop  the  numerous  points  of  con- 
trast. To  form  a  thorough  conception  of  the  romantic, 
therefore,  we  must  also  form  some  conception  of  the 
classic.  Now  there  is  an  obvious  unlikeness  between 
the  thought  and  art  of  the  nations  of  pagan  antiquity 
anj  the .  thouglil:--aELd  ^rt^gf  the  peop^les  o 
f^jidaL  Kurnpe.  Everyone  will  agree  to  call  the 
Parthenon,  the  "  Diana  "of  the  Louvre,  the  "GEdipus" 
of  Sophocles,  the  orations  of  Demosthenes  classical; 
and  to  call  the  cathedral  of  Chartres,  the  walls  of 
Nuremberg — die  Perle  des  Mittelalters—th&  ''Legenda 
Aurea"  of  Jacobus  de  Voragine,  the  "Tristan  und 
Isolde  "  of  Gottfried  of  Strasburg,  and  the  illuminations 
in  a  Catholic  missal  of  the  thirteenth  century  romantic. 

The  same  unlikeness  is  found  between  modern 
works  conceived  in  the  spirit,  or  executed  in  direct 
imitation,  of  ancient  and  mediaeval  art  respectively. 
It  is  easy  to  decide  that  Flaxman's  outline  drawings 
in  illustration  of  Homer  are  classic;  that  Alfieri's 
tragedies,- Goethe's  <*  Iphigenie  auf  Tauris"  Landor's 
''Hellenics,"  Gibson's  statues,  David's  paintings,  and 
the  church  of  the  Madeleine  in  Paris  are  classical,  at 
least  in  intention  and  in  the  models  which  they  follow; 
while  Victor  Hugo's   "Notre  Dame  de  Paris,"  Scott's 

*  "  The  Romantic  School  "  (Fleishman's  translation),  p.  13. 


4  <v^  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

"  Ivanhoe,"  Fouqu6's  "Der  Zauberring,"  and  Rossetti's 
painting,  "The  Girlhood  of  Mary,"  are  no  less  cer- 
tainly romantic  in  their  inspiration. 

But  critics  have  given  a  wider  extension  than  this 
to  the  terms  classic  and  romantic.  They  h^ve  dis- 
cerned, or  imagined,  certahi_q[ual[tieSj_^Uitu^^ 
mind,_ways_of_thinking  and  feeling,  trait^s  _pf _style 
which  distinguish_classic  from  romantic  art;  afidthey 
have  applied  the  words  accordingly  to  work  which  is 
not"  necessarily  either  antique  or  medigevaRn  subj ect; 
'hus  it  is  assumed,  for  example,  that  the  productions 
of  Greek  and  Roman  genius  were  characterized  by 
clearness,  simplicity,  restraint,  unity  of  design,  sub- 
ordination of  the  part  to  the  whole;  and  therefore^ 
"modern  works  which  make  this  impression  of  noble 
plainness  and  severity,  of  harmony  in  construction, 
economy  of  means  and  clear,  definite  outline,  are 
often  spoken  of  as  classical,  quite  irrespective  of  the 
historical  period  which  they  have  to  do  with.  In  this 
sense,  it  is  usual  to  say  that  Wordsworth's  "Michael  " 
is  classical,  or  that  Goethe's  "  Hermann  und  Doro- 
thea" is  classical;  though  Wordsworth  may  be  cele- 
brating the  virtues  of  a  Westmoreland  shepherd,  and 
Goethe  telling  the  story  of  two  rustic  lovers 'on 
the  German  border  at  the  time  of  the  Napoleonic 
wars. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  asserted  that  the  work  of 
mediaeval  poets  and  artists  is  marked  by  an  excess  of 
sentiment,  by  over-lavish  decoration,  a  strong  sense 
of  color  and  a  feeble  sense  of  form,  an  attention  to 
detail,  at  the  cost  of  the  main  impression,  and  a  con- 
sequent tendency  to  run  into  the  exaggerated,  the 
fantastic,   and   the  grotesque.     It  is   not  uncommon, 


The  Subject  T>efined.  5 

therefore,  to  find  poets  like  Byron  and  Shelley  classi- 
fied as  romanticists,  by  virtue  of  their  possession  of 
these,  or  similar,  characteristics,  although  no  one 
could  be  more  remote  from  mediaeval  habits  of  thought 
than  the  author  of  "Don  Juan"  or  the  author  of 
"The  Revolt  of  Islam." 

But  the  extension  of  these  opposing  terms  to  the 
work  of  writers  who  have  so  little  in  common  with 
either  the  antique  or  the  mediaeval  as  Wordsworth,  on 
the  one  hand,  and  Byron,  on  the  other,  does  not  stop 
here.  It  is  one  of  the  embarrassments  of  the  literary 
historian  that  nearly  every  word  which  he  uses  has 
two  meanings,  a  critical  and  a  popular  meaning.  Xn 
c  o  mmon  speech,  classjchas  come  to  signify  ajmos  t 
anything  that  is  good.  If  we  look  in  our  dictionaries 
we  find  it  defined  somewhat  in  this  way:  "  Conform- 
ing to  the  best  authority  in  literature  and  art;  pure; 
chaste;  refined;  originally  and  chiefly  used  of  the  best 
Greek  and  Roman  writers,  but  also  applied  to  the 
best  modern  authors,  or  their  works."  "Classic,  n. 
A  work  of  acknowledged  excellence  and  authority." 
In  this  sense  of  the  word,  "Robinson  Crusoe"  is  a 
classic;  the  "Pilgrim's  Progress"  is  a  classic;  every 
piece  of  literature  which  is  customarily  recommended 
as  a  safe  pattern  foTyoung  writers  to  form  their  style 
upon  is  a  claisicT* 

Contrariwise  the  word  romantic,  as  popularly  em- 
ployed,   expresses  a   shade    of   disapprobation.     The 

*  Un  classique  est  tout  artiste  4  I'ecole  de  qui  nous  pouvons  nous 
mettre  sans  craindre  que  ses  lemons  ou  ses  examples  nous  fourvoient. 
Ou  encore,  c'est  celui  qui  possede  .  .  .  des  qualitesdont  I'imitation, 
si  elle  ne  peut  pas  faire  de  bien,  ne  peut  pas  non  plus  faire  de  mal. 
— F.  Brtmetihe,  "Etudes  Critiques,"  Tome  III.  p.  300. 


6  <^  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

dictionaries  make_it_a_synonym  for  sentimental^  fanci- 
ful, wild,  extravagant,  chimerical,  all  evident  derivatives^ 
from  their   more   criticar~definition7^ "  pertaining^  or 
appropriate  to  the, style,of_the^ Christian  and_  popular 
ItTerature   nf  J^he  MiHdlp  Age<;j  a<;  nppnspH  tn  the  r.las- 
_  sicalj.ntig^ueJ'    -The  etymology  of  romance  is  familiar. 
The  various  dialects  which  sprang  from  the  corrup- 
I         tion  of  the  Latin  were  called  by  the  common  name  of 
(  ro??ians.     The  name  was  then  applied  to  any  piece  of 

\         literature  composed  in  this  vernacular  instead  of  in  the 
\        ancient  classical  Latin.     And  as  the  favorite  kind  of 
1       writing  in  Provencal,  Old  French,  and  Spanish  was  the 
1       tale  of  chivalrous  adventure,  that  was  called  par  excel- 
I        lence,  a  roman,  romans,  or  romance.      The  adjective  ro- 
mantic is  much  later,  implying,  as  it   does,  a  certain 
degree  of  critical  attention  to  the  species  of   fiction 
which  it  describes  in  order  to  a  generalizing  of  its 
peculiarities.     It  first  came   into   general  use  in  the 
latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century  and  the  early 
years  of  the   eighteenth;  and   naturally,   in  a  period 
which  considered  itself   classical,    was~mafked    from 
birth  with  that  shade  of  disapproval  which  hasjbeen 
noticed  TrT^iopular  usage. 

The  feature  that  struck  the  critics  most  in  the 
r<:^mances  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  in  that  very  different 
variety  of  romance  which  was  cultivated  during  the  sev- 
enteenth century — the  prolix,  sentimental  fictions  of 
La  Calprenede,  Scuderi,  Gomberville,  and  d'Urfe — was 
the  fantastic  improbability  of  their  adventures.  Hence 
the  common  acceptation  of  the  woikI  romantic  in  such 
phrases  as  "a  romantic  notion,"  "a  romantic  elope- 
ment," "an  act  of  romantic  generosity."  The  appli- 
cation  of   the    adjective   to    scenery   was    somewhat 


The  Subject  Tfefined.  7 

later;*  and  the  abstract  romanticism  was,  of  course, 
very  much  later;  as  the  literary  movement,  or  the 
"revolution  in  taste,  which  it  entitles,  was  not  enough 
developed  to  call  for  a  name  until  the  opening  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Indeed  it  was  never  so  compact, 
conscious,  and  definite  a  movement  in  England  as  in 
Germany  and  France;  and  its  baptism  doubtless  came 
from  abroad,  from  the  polemical  literature  which 
attended  the  career  of  the  German  romanticismus  and 
the  French  rontantisme. 

While  accepting  provisionally  Heine's  definition,  it 
will  be  useful  to  examine  some  of  the  wider  meanings 
that  have  been  attached  to  the  words  classic  and 
romantic,  and  some  of  the  analyses  that  have  been 
attempted  of  the  qualities  that  make  one  work  of  art 
classical  and  another  romantic.  Walter  Pater  took 
them  to  indicate  opposite  tendencies  or  elements  which 
are  present  in  varying  proportions  in  all  good  art.  It 
is  the  essential  function  of  glassical  art  and  literature, 
he  thought,  to  take  care  of  the  qualities  of  measure, 
purity,  temp^eranoel  "What  is  classical  comes  to  us 
out  of  the  cool  and  quiet  of  other  times,  as  a  measure 
of  what  a  long  experience  has  shown  us  will,  at  least, 
never  displease  us.  And  in  the  classical  literature  of^ 
Greece  and  Rome,  as  in  the  classics  of  the  last  cen-  (^ 
tury,  the  essentially  classical  element  is  that  quality  of  ' 
order  in  beauty  which  they  possess,  indeed,  in  a  pre- 
eminent  degree."  f     "The  charm,   then,    of  what  is 

*  Mr,  Perry  thinks  that  one  of  the  first  instances  of  the  use  of  the 
word  romantic  is  by  the  diarist  Evelyn  in  1654  :  "  There  is  also,  on 
the  side  of  this  horrid  alp,  a  very  romantic  seat." — English  Literature 
in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  by  Thomas  Sergeant  Perry,  p.  148,  note. 

\  "  Romanticism,"  Macmillan's  Magazine,  Vol.  XXXV. 


8  zA  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

classical  in  art  or  literature  is  that  of  the  well-known 
tale,  to  which  we  can  nevertheless  listen  over  and 
over  again,  because  it  is  told  so  well.  To  the 
absolute  beauty  of  its  form  is  added  the  accidental, 
tranquil  charm  of  familiarity." 

On  the  other  hand,  he  defines  the  romantic  charac- 
ter in  art  as  consisting  in  ^Hhe  addition  of  strangeness 
to  beauty  " — a  definition  which  recalls  Bacon's  saying, 
"There  is  no  excellent  beauty  that  hath  not  some 
strangeness  in  the  proportion."  "The  desire  of 
beauty,"  continues  Pater,  "being  a  fixed  element  in 
every  artistic  organization,  it  is  the  addition  of  curi- 
osity to  this  desire  of  beauty  that  constitutes  the 
romantic  temper."  This  critic,  then,  would  not  con- 
fine the  terms  classic  and  classicism  to  the  literature  of 
Greece  and  Rome  and  to  modern  works  conceived  in 
the  same  spirit,  although  he  acknowledges  that  there 
are  certain  ages  of  the  world  in  which  the  classical  tra- 
dition_predominate_s^__  /.  <?.,  in^jv1iklhMthe_respect  for 
authjTity^_the  love  of  order  and  decorum^_the  disposi- 
tion to  follow  rules  and  models,  the  acceptance  of 
academic  and  conventional  standards  overbalance  the  - 
desTreTor  strangeness  and  novelty.  Such  epochs  ^re, 
e.  g.,  the  Augustan  age  of  Rome,  the  Siecle  de  Louis  ■ 
XIV.  in  France,  the  times  of  Pope  and  Johnson  in 
England — indeed,  the  whole  of  the  eighteenth  century 
in  all  parts  of  Europe. 

Neither  would  he  limit  the  word  ro?nantic  to  work 
conceived  in  the  spirit  of  the  Middle  Ages.  "  The 
essential  elements,"  he  says,  "of  the  romantic  spirit 
are  curiosity  and  the  love  of  beauty;  and  it  is  as  the 
accidental  effect  of  these  qualities  only,  that  it  seeks 
the  Middle  Age;   because  in  the  overcharged  atmos- 


The  Subject  T>efined.  9 

phere  of  the  Middle  Age  there  are  unworked  sources  of 
romantic  effect,  of  a  strange  beauty  to  be  won  by 
strong  imagination  out  of  things  unlikely  or  remote." 
"The  sense  in  which  Scott  is  to  be  called  a  romantic^ 
writer  is  chiefly  that,  in  opposition  to  the  literary  tra- 
dition of  the  last  century,  he  loved  strange  adventure 
and  sought  it  in  the  Middle  Age." 

Here  again  the  essayist  is  careful  to  explain  that 
there  are  certain  epochs  which  are  predominantly 
romantic.  "  Outbreaks  of  this  spirit  come  naturally 
with  particular  periods:  times  when  .  .  .  men  come 
to  art  and  poetry  with  a  deep  thirst  for  intellectual 
excitement,  after  a  long  ennui."  He  instances,  as 
periods  naturally  romantic,  the  time  of  the  early  Pro- 
vencal troubadour  poetry:  the  years  following  the 
Bourbon  Restoration  in  France  (say  1815-30);  and 
"the  later  Middle  Age;  so  that  the  mediaeval 
poetry,  centering  in  Dante,  is  often  opposed  to 
Greek  or  Roman  poetry,  as  romantic  to  classical 
poetry." 

In  Pater's  use  of  the  terms,  then,  classic  and  ro- 
mantic do  not  describe  particular  literatures,  or  par- 
ticular periods  in  literary  history,  so  much  as  certain 
counterbalancing  qualities  and  tendencies  which  run 
through  the  literatures  of  all  times  and  countries. 
There  were  romantic  writings  among  the  Greeks  and 
Romans;  there  were  classical  writings  in  the  Middle 
Ages;  nay,  there  are  classical  and  romantic  traits  in 
the  same  author.  If  there  is  any  poet  who  may  safely 
be  described  as  a  classic,  it  is  Sophocles;  and  yet  Pater 
declares  that  the  "  Philoctetes "  of  Sophocles,  if 
issued  to-day,  would  be  called  romantic.  And  he  points 
out — what  indeed  has  been  often  pointed  out — that  the 


/ 


lo  <iA  History  of  English  l^pmanticism. 

"  Odyssey  "*  is  more  romantic  than  the  "  Iliad :"  is,  in 
fact,  rather  a  romance  than  a  hero-epic.  The  adven- 
tures of  the  wandering  Ulysses,  the  visit  to  the  land 
of  the  lotus-eaters,  the  encounter  with  the  Lsestry- 
gonians,  the  experiences  in  the  cave  of  Polyphemus,  if 
allowance  be  made  for  the  difference  in  sentiments  and 
manners,  remind  the  reader  constantly  of  the  mediaeval 
romans  d'aventure.  Pater  quotes  De  Stendhal's  say- 
ing that  all  good  art  was  romantic  in  its  day. 
"  Romanticism,"  says  De  Stendhal,  "  is  the  art  of  pre- 
senting to  the  nations  the  literary  works  which,  in  the 
actual  state  of  their  habits  and  beliefs,  are  capable  of 
giving  them  the  greatest  possible  pleasure:  classicism, 
on  the  contrary,  presents  them  with  what  gave  the 
greatest  possible  pleasure  to  their  great  grand- 
fathers " — a  definition  which  is  epigrammatic,  if  not 
convincing.!  De  Stendhal  (Henri  Beyle)  was  a 
pioneer  and  a  special  pleader  in  the  cause  of  French 
romanticism,  and,  in  his  use  of  the  terms,  romanticism 

*  The  Odyssey  has  been  explained  throughout  in  an  allegorical 
sense.  The  episode  of  Circe,  at  least,  lends  itself  obviously  to  such 
interpretation.  Circe's  cup  has  become  a  metaphor  for  sensual 
intoxication,  transforming  men  into  beasts;  Milton,  in  "Comus," 
regards  himself  as  Homer's  continuator,  enforcing  a  lesson  of 
temperance  in  Puritan  times  hardly  more  consciously  than  the  old 
Ionian  Greek  in  times  which  have  no  other  record  than  his  poem. 

f  "Racine  et  Shakespeare,  Etudes  en  Romantisme  "  (1823),  p.  32,  ed. 
of  Michel  Levy  Freres,  1854.  Such  would  also  seem  to  be  the  view 
maintained  by  M.  Emile  Deschanel,  whose  book  "  Le  Romantisme  des 
Classiques"  (Paris,  1883)  is  reviewed  by  M.  Brunetiere  in  an  article 
already  several  times  quoted.  "  Tous  les  classiques,"  according  to  M. 
Deschanel — at  least,  so  says  his  reviewer — "  ont  jadis  commence  par 
etre  des  romantiques."  And  again:  "  Un  romantique  serait  tout 
simplement  un  classique  en  route  pour  parvenir  ;  et,  reciproquement, 
un  classique  ne  serait  de  plus  qu'un  romantique  arrive." 


7he  Subject  'Defined.  1 1 

stands  for  progress,  Ubertv.  originality,  and  the_sj3iri.t^ 
of  the  future;  classicism,  for  conservatism^_authoritj, 
imitation,  the  spirit  of  the,  past.     According  to  him, 
ej[gry_£rood  piece  of  romanti£_art  is  a  classicin  the 
makings     Decried  by  the  classicists  of  to-da}',  for  its     ^ 
failure  to  observe  traditions,  it  will  be  used  by  the       \ 
classicists  of  the  future  as  a  pattern  to   which  new       / 
artists  must  conform.  ) 

It  may  be  worth  while  to  round  out  the  concep- 
tion of  the  term  by  considering  a  few  other  defini- 
tions of  romantic  which  have  been  proposed.  Dr. 
F.  H.  Hedge,  in  an  article  in  the  Atlantic  Mo)ithly* 
for  March,  1886,  inquired,  ''What  do  we  mean  by 
romantic?  "  Goethe,  he  says,  characterized  the  differ- 
ence between  classic  and  romantic  "as  equivalent  to 
[that  between]  healthy  and  morbid.  Schiller  proposed 
'naive  and  sentimental. 'f  The  greater  part  [of  the 
German  critics]  regarded  it  as  identical  with  the  differ- 
ence between  ancient  and  modern,  which  was  partly 
true,  but  explained  nothing.  None  of  the  definitions 
given  could  be  accepted  as  quite  satisfactory."]; 

Dr.  Hedge  himself  finds  the  origin  of  romantic  feel- 
ing  in    wonder   and    the    sense    of    mystery.      "  Xbe / 
jgssence  of  romance."  he.ja^ritfts,  i'_is_jnysi£ry  " ;  and^  /' 
he  enforces  the  point  by  noting  the  application  of  the  ,^ 
word  to  scenery.      "The  woody  dell,  the  leafy  glen, 
the  forest  path  which  leads,  one  knows  not  whither, 
are   romantic:    the  public    highway    is   not."     "The 

*  "  Classic  and  Romantic,"  Vol.  LVII. 

\  See  Schiller's  "  Ueber  naive  und  sentimentalische  Dichtung." 

X  Le  mot  de  romantisme,  apres  cinquante  ans  et  plus  de  discussions 

passionnees,  ne  laisse  pas  d'etre  encore  aujourd'hui  bien  vague  et  bien 

flottant. — Brunetiere,  ibid. 


12  e^  History 

winding  secret  broc|k  .  .  .  is  romantic,  as  compared 
with  the  broad  river."  <*  Moonlight  is  romantic,  as 
contrasted  with  daylight."  Dr.  Hedge  attributes  this 
fondness  for  the  mysterious  to  "the  influence  of  the 
Christian  religion,  which  deepened  immensely  the 
mystery  of  life,  suggesting  something  beyond  and 
behind  the  world  of  sense." 

This  charm  of  wonder  or  mystery  is  perhaps  only 
another  name  for  that  "strangeness  added  to  beauty  " 
which  Pater  takes  to  be  the  distinguishing  feature  of 
romantic  art.  Later  in  the  same  article,  Dr.  Hedge 
asserts  that  "the  essence  of  romanticism  is  aspira- 
tion." Much  might  be  said  in  defense  of  this  position. 
It  has  often  been  pointed  out,  e.  g.,  that  a  Gothic 
cathedral  expresses  aspiration,  and  a  Greek  temple 
satisfied  completeness.  Indeed  if  we  agree  that,  in  a 
general  way,  the  classic  is  equivalent  to  the  antique, 
and  the  romantic  to  the  mediaeval,  it  will  be  strange  if 
we  do  not  discover  many  differences  between  the  two 
that  can  hardly  be  covered  by  any  single  phrase.  Dr. 
Hedge  himself  enumerates  several  qualities  of  roman- 
tic art  which  it  would  be  difficult  to  bring  under  his 
essential  and  defining  category  of  wonder  or  aspira- 
tion. Thus  he  announces  that  "the  peculiarity  of  tshe 
classic  style  is  reserve,  self-suppression  of  the  writer"; 
while  "the  romantic  is  self-reflecting."  "Clear, 
unim passioned,  impartial  presentation  of  the  s^- 
j[ect  ...  is  thr~promInenFjeatune.Io7~tI^  classic 
stjle.  The  mod"eFn  "wrlte£  gives  you  not  so  miich  the^ 
things  themselves  as  his  JjnBression  of_thernr^~Trere 
■^theTrls~the  familiar  critical  distinction  between__the^ 
objective  and  subjectiv^  metbo'cfs— SchliTer's  naw  und 
sentimentalisch—2ip0^' ^^'^  criterion   of   classic  and 


The  Subject  'Defined.  13 

romantic  style.  This  contrast  the  essayist  develops 
at  some  length,  dwelling  upon  "the  cold  reserve  and 
colorless  simplicity  of  the  classic  style,  where  the 
medium  is  lost  in  the  object";  and  "on  the  other 
hand,  the  inwardness,  the  sentimental  intensity,  the 
subjective  coloring  of  the  romantic  style." 

A  further  distinguishing  mark  of  the  romantic 
spirit,  mentioned  by  Dr.  Hedge  in  common  with  many 
other  critics,   is  the  indefiniteness  or  incompleteness 


of  its^creations.  This  is  a  consequence,  of  course,  of 
Its  sense  of  mystery  and  aspiration.  Schopenhauer 
said  that  music  was  the  characteristic  modern  art, 
because  of  its  subjective,  indefinite  character.  Pur- 
suing this  line  of  thought.  Dr.  Hedge  affirms  that 
"  romantic  relates  to  classic  somewhat  as  music  relates 
to  plastic  art.  .  .  It  [music]  presents  no  finished 
ideal,  but  suggests  ideals  beyond  the  capacity  of  can- 
vas or  stone.  Plastic  art  acts  on  the  intellect,  music 
on  the  feelings;  the  one  affects  us  by  what  it  presents, 
the  other  by  what  it  suggests.  This,  it  seems  to  me, 
is  essentially  the  difference  between  classic  and  ro- 
mantic poetry  ";  and  he  names  Homer  and  Milton  as 
examples  of  the  former,  and  Scott  and  Shelley  of  the 
latter  school. 

Here  then  we  have  a  third  criterion  proposed  for 
determining  the  essential  differentia  of  romantic  art. 
First  it  was  mystery,  then  aspiration;  now  it  is  the 
appeal  to  the  emotions  by  the  method  of  suggestion. 
And  yet  there  is,  perhaps,  no  inconsistency  on  the 
critic's  part  in  this  continual  shifting  of  his  ground. 
He  is  apparently  presenting  different  facets  of  the  same  * 
truth;  he  means  one  thing  by  this  mystery,  aspiration,  \ 
indefiniteness,   incompleteness,  emotional  suggestive-  ||^ 


14  '^  History  of  English  l^pmanticism. 

ness:  that  quality  or  effect  which  we  all  feel  to  be 
present  in  romantic  and  absent  from  classic  work,  but 
which  we  find  it  hard  to  describe  by  any  single  term. 
It  is  open  to  any  analyst  of  our  critical  vocabulary  to 
draw  out  the  fullest  meanings  that  he  can,  from 
such  pairs  of  related  words  as  classic  and  romantic, 
fancy  and  imagination,  wit  and  humor,  reason  and 
understanding,  passion  and  sentiment.  Let  us,  for 
instance,  develop  briefly  this  proposition  that  the  ideal 
of  classic  art  i_s_completeness^*  and  tfce, ideal  of  jroman* 
tic  art  indefiniteness,  or  suggestiveness^ 

aT  W.  Schlegel  t  had  already  made"use  of  two  of  the 
"arts  of  design,  to  illustrate  the  distinction  between 
classic  and  romantic,  just  as  Dr.  Hedge  uses  plastic 
art  and  music.  I  refer  to  Schlegel's  famous  saying 
that  the  genius  of  the  antique  drama  was  statuesque, 
and  that  of  the  romantic  drama  picturesque.  A  Greek 
temple,  statue,  or  poem  has  no  imperfection  and  offers 
no  further  promise,  indicates  nothing  beyond  what  it 
expresses.  It  fills  the  sense,  it  leaves  nothing  to  the 
imagination.  It  stands  correct,  symmetric,  sharp  in 
outline,  in  the  clear  light  of  day.  There  is  nothing 
more  to  be  done  to  it;  there  is  no  concealment  about  it. 
But  in  romantic  art  there  is  seldom  this  completeness. 
The  workman  lingers,  he  would  fain  add  another 
touch,  his  ideal  eludes  him.  Is  a  Gothic  cathedral 
ever  really  finished?  Is  "Faust"  finished?  Is 
"  Hamlet  "  explained?  The  modern  spirit  is  mystical; 
its  architecture,  painting,   poetry  employ  shadow  to 

*  Ce  qui  constitue  proprement  un  classique,  c'est  I'equilibre  en  lui 
de  toutes  les  facultes  qui  concourent  a  la  perfection  de  I'oeuvre  4'art. 
— Brunetiere,  ibid. 

\  "  Vorlesungen  uber  dramatische  Kunst  und  Litteratur." 


The  Subject  'Defined.  15 

produce  their  highest  effects:  shadow  and  color  rather 
than  contour.  On  the  Greek  heroic  stage  there  were 
a  few  figures,  two  or  three  at  most,  grouped  like 
statuary  and  thrown  out  in  bold  relief  at  the  apex  of 
the  scene:  in  Greek  architecture  a  few  clean,  simple 
lines:  in  Greek  poetry  clear  conceptions  easily  express- 
ible in  language  and  mostly  describable  in  sensuous 
images. 

The  modern  theater  is  crowded  with  figures  and 
colors,  and  the  distance  recedes  in  the  middle  of 
the  scene.  This  love  of  perspective  is  repeated  in 
cathedral  aisles,*  the  love  of  color  in  cathedral  win- 
dows, and  obscurity  hovers  in  the  shadows  of  the 
vault.  In  our  poetry,  in  our  religion  these  twilight 
thoughts  prevail.  We  seek  no  completeness  here. 
What  is  beyond,  what  is  inexpressible  attracts  us. 
Hence  the  greater  spirituality  of  romantic  literature, 
its  deeper  emotion,  its  more  passionate  tenderness. 
But  hence  likewise  its  sentimentality,  its  melancholy 
and,  in  particular,  the  morbid  fascination  which  the 
thought  of  death  has  had  for  the  Gothic  mind.  The 
classic  nations  concentrated  their  attention  on  life  and 
light,  and  spent  few  thoughts  upon  darkness  and  the 
tomb.  Death  was  to  them  neither  sacred  nor  beauti- 
ful. Their  decent  rites  of  sepulture  or  cremation 
seem  designed  to  hide  its  deformities  rather  than  to 
prolong  its  reminders.  The  presence  of  the  corpse 
was  pollution.  No  Greek  could  have  conceived  such 
a  book  as  the  "  Hydriotaphia  "  or  the  "  Anatomy  of 
Melancholy." 

*  Far  to  the  west  the  long,  long  vale  withdrawn, 
Where  twilight  loves  to  linger  for  a  while. 

—Beattie's''  Minstrel." 


1 6  cA  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

It  is  observable  that  Dr.  Hedge  is  at  one  with  Pater, 
in  desiring  some  more  philosophical  statement  of  the 
difference  between  classic  and  romantic  than  the 
common  one  which  makes  it  simply  the  difference 
between  the  antique  and  the  mediaeval.  He  says: 
"  It  must  not  be  supposed  that  ancient  and  classic,  on 
one  side,  and  modern  and  romantic,  on  the  other,  are 
inseparably  one;  so  that  nothing  approaching  to 
romantic  shall  be  found  in  any  Greek  or  Roman 
author,  nor  any  classic  page  in  the  literature  of 
modern  Europe.  .  .  The  literary  line  of  demarca- 
tion is  not  identical  with  the  chronological  one." 
And  just  as  Pater  says  that  the  Odyssey  is  more 
romantic  than  the  Iliad,  so  Dr.  Hedge  says  that  "  the 
story  of  Cupid  and  Psyche,*  in  the  'Golden  Ass'  of 
Apuleius,  is  as  much  a  romance  as  any  composition  of 
the  seventeenth  or  eighteenth  century."  Mediaeval- 
ism  he  regards  as  merely  an  accident  of  romance: 
Scott,  as  most  romantic  in  his  themes,  but  Byron,  in 
his  mood. 

So,  too,  Mr.  Sidney  Colvin  f  denies  that  "  a  predilec- 
tion for  classic  subjects  .  .  .  can  make  a  writer  that 
which  we  understand  by  the  word  classical  as  distin- 
guished  from  that  which  we  understand  by  the  word 
romantic.     The  distinction  lies  deeper,  and  is  a  dis- 

*  The  modernness  of  this  "latest  born  of  the  myths"  resides 
partly  in  its  spiritual,  almost  Christian  conception  of  love,  partly  in 
its  allegorical  theme,  the  soul's  attainment  of  immortality  through 
love.  The  Catholic  idea  of  penance  is  suggested,  too,  in  Psyche's 
"  wandering  labors  long."  This  apologue  has  been  a  favorite  with 
platonizing  poets,  like  Spenser  and  Milton.  See  "  The  Faerie 
Queene,"  book  iii.  canto  vi.  stanza  1.,  and  "  Comus,"  lines  1002-11. 

f  "  Selections  from  Walter  Savage  Lander,"  Preface,  p.  vii. 


The  Subject  T)efined.  17 

tinction  much  less  of  subject  than  of  treatment.  .  . 
In  classical  writing  every  idea  is  called  up  to  the  mind 
as  nakedly  as  possible,  and  at  the  same  time  as  dis- 
tinctly; it  is  exhibited  in  white  light,  and  left  to  pro- 
duce its  effect  by  its  own  unaided  power.*  In  romantic 
writing,  on  the  other  hand,  all  objects  are  exhib- 
ited, as  it  were,  through  a  colored  and  iridescent 
atmosphere.  Round  about  every  central  idea  the  ro- 
mantic writer  summons  up  a  cloud  of  accessory  and 
subordinate  ideas  for  the  sake  of  enhancing  its  effect, 
if  at  the  risk  of  confusing  its  outlines.  The  temper^^^^ 
again,  of  the  romantic  writer  is  one  of  excitement, 
while  the  temper  of  the  classical  writer  is  one  of  self- 
possession.  .  .  On  the  one  hand  there  is  calm,  on  the 
other  hand  enthusiasm.  The  virtues  of  the  one  style 
are  strength  of  grasp,  with  clearness  and  justice  of 
presentment;  the  virtues  of  the  other  style  are  glow  of 
spirit,  with  magic  and  richness  of  suggestion."  Mr. 
Colvin  then  goes  on  to  enforce  and  illustrate  this  con- 
trast between  the  "accurate  and  firm  definition  of 
things"  in  classical  writers  and  the  "thrilling vagueness 
and  uncertainty,"  the  tremulous,  coruscating,  vibrating 
or  colored  light — the  "  halo" — with  which  the  roman- 
tic writer  invests  his  theme.  "The  romantic  man- 
ner, .  .  with  its  thrilling  uncertainties  and  its  rich 
suggestions,  may  be  more  attractive  than  the  classic 
manner,  with  its  composed  and  measured  preciseness 
of  statement.  .  .  But  on  the  other  hand  the  roman- 
tic  manner  lends  itself,  as  the  true  classical  does  not, 
to  inferior  work.  Second-rate  conceptions  excitedly 
and  approximately  put   into  words  derive  from  it  an 

*  See  also  Walter  Bagehot's  essay  on  "  Pure,  Ornate,  and  Grotesque 
Art."  "  Literary  Studies,  Works  "  (Hartford,  1889),  Vol  I.  p.  200. 


i8  e/f  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

illusive  attraction  which  may  make  them  for  a  time, 
and  with  all  but  the  coolest  judges,  pass  as  first-rate. 
Whereas  about  true  classical  writing  there  can  be  no 
illusion.  It  presents  to  us  conceptions  calmly  realized 
in  words  that  exactly  define  them,  conceptions  depend- 
ing for  their  attraction,  not  on  their  halo,  but  on 
themselves." 

As  examples  of  these  contrasting  styles,  Mr.  Col- 
vin  puts  side  by  side  passages  from  "The  Ancient 
Mariner  "  and  Keats'  "Ode  to  a  Nightingale,"  with 
passages,  treating  similar  themes,  from  Landor's 
"  Gebir  "  and  "  Imaginary  Conversations."  The  con- 
trast might  be  even  more  clearly  established  by  a  study 
of  such  a  piece  as  Keats'  "  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn," 
>  /I where  the  romantic  form  is  applied  to  classical  content; 
ior  by  a  comparison  of  Tennyson's  ""Tllysses  "  and 
i  "The  Lotus  Eaters,"  in  which  Homeric  subjects  are 
/  treated  respectively  in  the  classic  and  the  romantic 
manner. 

Alfred  de  Musset,  himself  in  early  life  a  prominent 
figure  among  the  French  romanticists,  wrote  some 
capital  satire  upon  the  baffling  and  contradictory  defi- 
nitions of  the  word  romantisftie  that  were  current  in 
the  third  and  fourth  decades  of  this  century.*  TSvo 
worthy  provincials  write  from  the  little  town  of  La 
Ferte-sous-Jouarre  to  the  editor  of  the  "  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes,"  appealing  to  him  to  tell  them  what 
romanticism  means.  For  two  years  Dupuis  and  his 
friend  Cotonet  had  supposed  that  the  term  applied  only 
to  the  theater,  and  signified  the  disregard  of  the  unities. 
"  Shakspere,  for  example,   makes  people  travel  from 

*  Lettres  de  Dupuis  et  Cotonet  (i 836) ,  "  CEuvres  Completes  "  (Char- 
pentier  edition,  1881),  Tome  IX.  p.  194. 


.^ 


7he  Subject  IDe fined.  19 

Rome  to  London,  and  from  Athens  to  Alexandria  in  a 
quarter  of  an  hour.  His  heroes  live  ten  or  twenty  years 
between  two  acts.  His  heroines,  angels  of  virtue  dur- 
ing a  whole  scene,  have  only  to  pass  into  the  coulisses, 
to  reappear  as  wives,  adulteresses,  widows,  and  grand- 
mothers. There,  we  said  to  ourselves,  is  the  roman- 
tic.  Contrariwise,  Sophocles  makes  CEdJ^us.sit  on  a 
rock,  even  at  the  cost  of  great  personal  inconvenience, 
from  the  very  beginning  of  his  tragedy.  All  the  char- 
acters come  there  to  find  him,  one  after  the  other. 
Perhaps  he  stands  up  occasionally,  though  I  doubt  it; 
unless,  it  may  be,  out  of  respect  for  Theseus,  who, 
during  the  entire  play,  obligingly  walks  on  the  high- 
way, coming  in  or  going  out  continually.  .  .  There, 
we  said  to  ourselves,  is  the  classic." 

But  about  1828,  continues  the  letter,  "we  learned 
that  there  were  romantic  poetry  and  classical  poetry, 
romantic  novels  and  classical  novels,  romantic  odes 
and  classical  odes;  nay,  a  single  line,  my  dear  sir,  a 
sole  and  solitary  line  of  verse  might  be  romantic  or 
classic,  according  as  the  humor  took  it.  When  we 
received  this  intelligence,  we  could  not  close  our  eyes 
all  night.  Two  years  of  peaceful  conviction  had  van- 
ished like  a  dream.  All  our  ideas  were  turned  topsy- 
turvy; for  if  the  rules  of  Aristotle  were  no  longer  the 
line  of  demarcation  which  separated  the  literary  camps, 
where  was  one  to  find  himself,  and  what  was  he  to 
depend  upon?  How  was  one  to  know,  in  reading  a 
book,  which  school  it  belonged  to?  .  .  Luckily  in  the 
same  year  there  appeared  a  famous  preface,  which  we 
devoured  straightway.*    .    .     This  said  very  distinctly 

*  Preface  to  Victor  Hugo's  "  Cromwell,"  dated  October,  1827.  The 
play  was  printed,  but  not  acted,  in  1828. 


20  <iA  History  of  English  l^pmanticism. 

that  romanticism  was  nothing  else  than  the  alliance  of 
the  playful  and  the  serious,  of  the  grotesque  and  the 
terrible,  of  the  jocose  and  the  horrible,  or  in  other 
words,  if  you  prefer,  of  comedy  and  tragedy." 

This  definition  the  anxious  inquirers  accepted  for 
the  space  of  a  year,  until  it  was  borne  in  upon  them 
that  Aristophanes — not  to  speak  of  other  ancients — 
had  mixed  tragedy  and  comedy  in  his  dramas.  Once 
again  the  friends  were  plunged  in  darkness,  and  their 
perplexity  was  deepened  when  they  were  taking  a 
walk  one  evening  and  overheard  a  remark  made  by 
the  niece  of  the  sous-pre'fet.  This  young  lady  had 
fallen  in  love  with  English  ways,  as  was — somewhat 
strangely — evidenced  by  her  wearing  a  green  veil, 
orange-colored  gloves,  and  silver-rimmed  spectacles. 
As  she  passed  the  promenaders,  she  turned  to  look  at 
a  water-mill  near  the  ford,  where  there  were  bags  of 
grain,  geese,  and  an  ox  in  harness,  and  she  exclaimed 
to  her  governess,  "  Voila  un  site  romantique." 

This  mysterious  sentence  roused  the  flagging  curi- 
osity of  MM.  Dupuis  and  Cotonet,  and  they  renewed 
their  investigations.  A  passage  in  a  newspaper  led 
them  to  believe  for  a  time  that  romanticism  was  the 
imitation  of  the  Germans,  with,  perhaps,  the  addition 
of  the  English  and  Spanish.  Then  they  were  tempted 
to  fancy  that  it  might  be  merely  a  matter  of  literary 
form,  possibly  this  vers  brise  (run-over  lines,  enjam- 
bement)  that  they  are  making  so  much  noise  about. 
"  From  1830  to  1831  we  were  persuaded  that  romanti- 
cism was  the  historic  style  [genre  historique)  or,  if  you 
please,  this  mania  which  has  lately  seized  our  authors 
for  calling  the  characters  of  their  novels  and  melo- 
dramas  Charlemagne,   Francis   I.,   or  Henry  IV.,  in- 


7he  Subject  Tfefined.  21 

stead  of  Amadis,  Oronte,  or  Saint-Albin.  .  .  From 
1831  to  the  year  following  we  thought  it  was  the  genre 
intime,  about  which  there  was  much  talk.  But  with 
all  the  pains  that  we  took  we  never  could  discover 
what  the  gejire  intiine  was.  The  '  intimate '  novels  are 
just  like  the  others.  They  are  in  two  volumes  octavo, 
with  a  great  deal  of  margin.  .  .  They  have  yellow 
covers  and  they  cost  fifteen  francs."  From  1832  to 
1833  they  conjectured  that  romanticism  might  be 
a  system  of  philosophy  and  political  economy.  From 
1833  to  1834  they  believed  that  it  consisted  in  not 
shaving  one's  self,  and  in  wearing  a  waistcoat  with 
wide  facings  very  much  starched. 

At  last  they  bethink  themselves  of  a  certain  lawyer's 
clerk,  who  had  first  imported  these  literary  disputes 
into  the  village,  in  1824.  To  him  they  expose  their 
difficulties  and  ask  for  an  answer  to  the  question, 
What  is  romanticism?  After  a  long  conversation, 
they  receive  this  final  definition.  "  Romanticism,  my 
dear  sir!  No,  of  a  surety,  it  is  neither  the  disregard 
of  the  unities,  nor  the  alliance  of  the  comic  and 
tragic,  nor  anything  in  the  world  expressible  by  words. 
In  vain  you  grasp  the  butterfly's  wing;  the  dust  which 
gives  it  its  color  is  left  upon  your  fingers.  Romanti- 
cism is  the  star  that  weeps,  it  is  the  wind  that  wails, 
it  is  the  night  that  shudders,  the  bird  that  flies  and 
the  flower  that  breathes  perfume:  it  is  the  sudden 
gush,  the  ecstasy  grown  faint,  the  cistern  beneath  the 
palms,  rosy  hope  with  her  thousand  loves,  the  angel 
and  the  pearl,  the  white  robe  of  the  willows.  It  is  the 
infinite  and  the  starry,"  etc.,  etc. 

Then  M.  Ducoudray,  a  magistrate  of  the  depart- 
ment, gives  his  theory  of  romanticism,  which  he  con- 


22  r^  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

siders  to  be  an  effect  of  the  religious  and  political 
reaction  under  the  restored  Bourbon  monarchy  of 
Louis  XVin.  and  Charles  X.  "The  mania  for 
ballads,  arriving  from  Germany,  met  the  legitimist 
poetry  one  fine  day  at  Ladvocat's  bookshop;  and  the 
two  of  them,  pickax  in  hand,  went  at  nightfall  to 
a  churchyard,  to  dig  up  the  Middle  Ages."  The  taste 
for  mediaevalism,  M.  Ducoudray  adds,  has  survived 
the  revolution  of  1830,  and  romanticism  has  even 
entered  into  the  service  of  liberty  and  progress,  where 
it  is  a  manifest  anachronism,  "  employing  the  style  of 
Ronsard  to  celebrate  railroads,  and  imitating  Dante 
when  it  chants  the  praises  of  Washington  and  La- 
fayette." Dupuis  was  tempted  to  embrace  M.  Ducou- 
dray's  explanation,  but  Cotonet  was  not  satisfied.  He 
shut  himself  in,  for  four  months,  at  the  end  of  which 
he  announced  his  discovery  that  the  true  and  only  dif- 
ference between  the  classic  and  the  romantic  is  that 
the  latter  uses  a  good  many  adjectives.  He  illustrates 
his  principle  by  giving  passages  from  *'  Paul  and  Vir- 
ginia "  and  the  "  Portuguese  Letters,"  written  in  the 
romantic  style. 

Thus  Musset  pricks  a  critical  bubble  with  the  point 

of  his  satire;  and  yet  the  bubble  declines  to  vanish. 

There  must  really  be  some  more  substantial  difference 

than  this  between  classic  and  romantic,  for  the  terms 

persist  and  are  found  useful.     It  may  be  true  that  the 

,  romantic  temper,  being  subjective  and  excited,  tends 

\to  an  excess  in  adjectives;  the  adjective  being  that 

-/part  of  speech  which  attributes  qualities,  and  is  there- 

/  fore  most  freely  used  by  emotional  persons.     Still  it 

would  be  possible  to  cut  out  all  the  adjectives,  not 

\ strictly  necessary,  from  one  of  Tieck's  Mdrchen  with- 


The  Subject  'Defined.  23 

out  in  the  slightest  degree   disturbing   its  romantic 
character. 

It  remains  to  add  that  romanticism  is  a  word  which 
faces  in  two  directions.  It  is  now  opposed  to  realism, 
as  it  was  once  opposed  to  classicism.  As,  in  one  way, 
its  freedom  and  lawlessness,  its  love  of  novelty,  experi- 
ment, "strangeness  added  to  beauty,"  contrast  with 
the  classical  respect  for  rules,  models,  formulae,  prec- 
edents, conventions;  so,  in  another  way,  its  discon- 
tent with  things  as  they  are,  its  idealism,  aspiration, 
mysticism  contrast  with  the  realist's  conscientious 
adherence  to  fact.  '*  Ivanhoe  "  is  one  kind  of  romance; 
**  The  Marble  Faun  "  is  another.* 

*  In  modern  times  romanticism,  typifying  a  permanent  tendency 
of  the  human  mind,  has  been  placed  in  opposition  to  what  is  called 
realism.  .  .  [But]  there  is,  as  it  appears  to  us,  but  one  fundamental 
note  which  all  romanticism  .  .  .  has  in  common,  and  that  is 
a  deep  disgust  with  the  world  as  it  is  and  a  desire  to  depict  in 
literature  something  that  is  claimed  to  be  nobler  and  better. — 
Essays  on  German  Literature,  by  H.  H.  Boyesen,  pp.  358  and  356. 


CHAPTER  11. 
XLbc  Bugustans. 

The  Romantic  Movement  in  England  was  a  part  of 
the  general  European  reaction  against  the  spirit  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  This  began  somewhat  earlier  in 
England  than  in  Germany,  and  very  much  earlier  than 
in  France,  where  literary  conservatism  went  strangely 
hand  in  hand  with  political  radicalism.  In  England 
the  reaction  was  at  first  gradual,  timid_,  and  uncon- 
scious. It  did  not  reach  importance  until  the  sev- 
enth decade  of  the  century,  and  culminated  only  in 
the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  me- 
diaeval revival  was  only  an  incident — though  a  leading 
incident — of  this  movement;  but  it  is  the  side  of  it  with 
which  the  present  work  will  mainly  deal.  Thus  I 
shall  have  a  great  deal  to  say  about  Scott;  very  little 
about  Byron,  intensely  romantic  as  he  was  in  many 
meanings  of  the  word.  This  will  not  preclude  me 
from  glancing  occasionally  at  other  elements  besides 
medisevalism  which  enter  into  the  concept  of  the 
term  " romantic." 

Reverting  then  to  our  tentative  definition — Heine's 
definition— of  romanticism,  as  the  reproduction  in 
modern  art  and  literature  of  the  life  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  it  should  be  explained  that  the  expression, 
"  Middle  Ages,"  is  to  be  taken  here  in  a  liberal  sense. 
Contributions  to  romantic  literature  such  as  Macpher- 

24 


The  e^ugustans.  25 

son's  "Ossian,"  Collins'  "  Ode  on  the  Superstitions  of 
the  Scottish  Highlands,"  and  Gray's  translations  from 
the  Welsh  and  the  Norse,  relate  to  periods  which  ante- 
date that  era  of  Christian  chivalry  and  feudalism, 
extending  roughly  from  the  eleventh  century  to  the 
fifteenth,  to  which  the  term,  "Middle  Ages,"  more 
strictly  applies.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  ground- 
work, at  least,  of  ancient  hero-epics  like  "Beowulf" 
and  the  "  Nibelungen  Lied,"  of  the  Icelandic  "  Sagas," 
and  of  similar  products  of  old  heathen  Europe  which 
have  come  down  in  the  shape  of  mythologies,  popu- 
lar superstitions,  usages,  rites,  songs,  and  traditions. 
These  began  to  fall  under  the  notice  of  scholars  about 
the  middle  of  the  last  century  and  made  a  deep  im- 
pression upon  contemporary  letters. 

Again,  the  influence  of  the  Middle  Age  proper  pro- 
longed itself  beyond  the  exact  close  of  the  mediaeval 
period,  which  it  is  customary  to  date  from  the  fall  of 
Constantinople  in  1453.  The  great  romantic  poets  of 
Italy,  Boiardo,  Ariosto,  Tasso,  wrote  in  the  full  flush 
of  the  pagan  revival  and  made  free  use  of  the  Greek 
and  Roman  mythologies  and  the  fables  of  Homer, 
Vergil,  and  Ovid;  and  yet  their  work  is  hardly  to  be 
described  as  classical.  Nor  is  the  work  of  their 
English  disciples,  Spenser  and  Sidney;  while  the  en- 
tire Spanish  and  English  drama  of  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries  (down  to  1640,  and  with  an 
occasional  exception,  like  Ben  Jonson)  is  romantic. 
Calderon  is  romantic;  Shakspere  and  Fletcher  are 
romantic.  If  we  agree  to  regard  mediaeval  literature, 
then,  as  comprising  all  the  early  literature  of  Europe 
which  drew  its  inspiration  from  other  than  Greek- 
Latin  sources,  we   shall   do   no  great  violence  to  the 


26  (^^  History  of  English  T^pmanticism. 

usual  critical  employment  of  the  word.  I  say  early 
literature,  in  order  to  exclude  such  writings  as  are 
wholly  modern,  like  "  Robinson  Crusoe,"  or  "  Gulliver's 
Travels,"  or  Fielding's  novels,  which  are  neither  classic 
nor  romantic,  but  are  the  original  creation  of  our  own 
time.  With  works  like  these,  though  they  are  per- 
haps the  most  characteristic  output  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  our  inquiries  are  not  concerned. 

It  hardly  needs  to  be  said  that  the  reproduction,  or 
imitation,  of  mediseval  life  by  the  eighteenth-  and 
nineteenth-century  romanticists,  contains  a  large  ad- 
mixture of  modern  thought  and  feeling.  The  brilliant 
pictures  of  feudal  society  in  the  romances  of  Scott 
and  Fouque  give  no  faithful  image  of  that  society, 
even  when  they  are  carefully  correct  in  all  ascertain- 
able historical  details.*  They  give  rather  the  im- 
pression left  upon  an  alien  mind  by  the  quaint, 
picturesque  features  of  a  way  of  life  which  seemed 
neither  quaint  nor  picturesque  to  the  men  who  lived 
it,  but  only  to  the  man  who  turns  to  it  for  relief  from 
the  prosaic,    or  at  least    familiar,   conditions  of    the 

*As  another  notable  weakness  of  the  age  is  its  habit  of  looking 
back,  in  a  romantic  and  passionate  idleness,  to  the  past  agefe — not 
understanding  them  all  the  while  ...  so  Scott  gives  up  nearly 
the  half  of  his  intellectual  power  to  a  fond  yet  purposeless  dreaming 
over  the  past ;  and  spends  half  his  literary  labors  in  endeavors  to 
revive  it,  not  in  reality,  but  on  the  stage  of  fiction  :  endeavors 
which  were  the  best  of  the  kind  that  modernism  made,  but  still  suc- 
cessful only  so  far  as  Scott  put  under  the  old  armor  the  everlasting 
human  nature  which  he  knew  ;  and  totally  unsuccessful  so  far  as  con- 
cerned the  painting  of  the  armor  itself,  which  he  knew  not.  .  .  . 
His  romance  and  antiquarianism,  his  knighthood  and  monkery,  are 
all  false,  and  he  knows  them  to  be  {aXsQ.—Ruskin,  "  Modern  Paint- 
ers" Vol.  III.  p.  279  (First  American  Edition,  i860). 


The  <i/Jugtislans.  27 

modern  world.  The  offspring  of  the  modern  imagina- 
tion, acting  upon  mediaeval  material,  may  be  a  per- 
fectly legitimate,  though  not  an  original,  form  of  art. 
It  may  even  have  a  novel  charm  of  its  own,  unlike 
either  parent,  but  like  Euphorion,  child  of  Faust  by 
Helen  of  Troy,  a  blend  of  Hellas  and  the  Middle  Age. 
Scott's  verse  tales  are  better  poetry  than  the  English 
metrical  romances  of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
centuries.  Tennyson  has  given  a  more  perfect  shape 
to  the  Arthurian  legends  than  Sir  Thomas  Malory, 
their  compiler,  or  Walter  Map  and  Chrestien  de  Troyes, 
their  possible  inventors.  But,  of  course,  to  study  the 
Middle  Age,  as  it  really  was,  one  must  go  not  to  Ten- 
nyson and  Scott,  but  to  the  "Chanson  de  Roland," 
and  the  "Divine  Comedy,"  and  the  "  Romaunt  of  the 
Rose,"  and  the  chronicles  of  Villehardouin,  Joinville, 
and  Froissart. 

And  the  farther  such  study  is  carried,  the  more 
evident  it  becomes  that  "  mediaeval  "  and  "  romantic  " 
are  not  synonymous.  The  Middle  Age  was  not,  at  all 
points,  romantic:  it  is  the  modern  romanticist  who 
makes,  or  finds,  it  so.  He  sees  its  strange,  vivid 
peculiarities  under  the  glamour  of  distance. 
Chaucer's  temper,  for  instance,  was  by  no  means  ro- 
mantic. That  "  good  sense  "  which  Dryden  mentions 
as  his  prominent  trait;  that  "low  tone"  which  Lowell 
praises  in  him,  and  which  keeps  him  close  to  the  com- 
mon ground  of  experience,  pervade  his  greatest  work, 
the  "  Canterbury  Tales,"  with  an  insistent  realism.  It 
is  true  that  Chaucer  shared  the  beliefs  and  influences 
of  his  time  and  was  a  follower  of  its  literary  fashions. 
In  his  version  of  the  "Romaunt  of  the  Rose,"  his 
imitations  of  Machault,  and  his  early  work  in  general, 


28  eA  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

he  used  the  mediaeval  machinery  of  allegory  and 
dreams.  In  "  Troilus  and  Cresseide  "  and  the  tale  of 
"Palamon  and  Arcite,"  he  carries  romantic  love  and 
knightly  honor  to  a  higher  pitch  than  his  model,  Boc- 
caccio. But  the  shrewdly  practical  Pandarus  of  the 
former  poem — a  character  almost  wholly  of  Chaucer's 
creation — is  the  very  embodiment  of  the  anti-roman- 
tic attitude,  and  a  remarkable  anticipation  of  Sancho 
Panza;  while  the  "Rime  of  Sir  Thopas"  is  a  dis- 
tinct burlesque  of  the  fantastic  chivalry  romances.* 
Chaucer's  pages  are  picturesque  with  tournament, 
hunting  parties,  baronial  feasts,  miracles  of  saints, 
feats  of  magic;  but  they  are  solid,  as  well,  with  the 
everyday  life  of  fourteenth-century  England.  They 
have  the  naivete  dind  garrulity  which  are  marks  of  me- 
diaeval work,  but  not  the  quaintness  and  grotesquerie 
which  are  held  to  be  marks  of  romantic  work.  Not 
archaic  speech,  but  a  certain  mental  twist  constitutes 
quaintness.  Herbert  and  Fuller  are  quaint;  Blake  is 
grotesque;  Donne  and  Charles  Lamb  are  willfully 
quaint,  subtle,  and  paradoxical.  But  Chaucer  is 
always  straight-grained,  broad,  and  natural. 

Even  Dante,  the  poet  of  the  Catholic  Middle  Age; 
Dante,  the  mystic,  the  idealist,  with  his  intense 
spirituality  and  his  passion  for  symbolism,  has  been 
sometimes  called  classic,  by  virtue  of  the  powerful 
construction  of  his  great  poem,  and  his  scholastic 
rigidity  of  method. 

The  relation  between  modern  romanticizing  litera- 

*  See  also  the  sly  hit  at  popular  fiction  in  the  Nonne  Prestes  Tale: 
"  This  story  is  also  trewe,  I  undertake, 
As  is  the  book  of  Launcelot  de  Lake, 
That  women  hold  in  ful  gret  reverence." 


The  rtAiigiistans.  29 


ture  and  the  real  literature  of  the  Middle  Ages,  is 
something  like  that  between  the  literature  of  the 
renaissance  and  the  ancient  literatures  of  Greece  and 
Rome.  But  there  is  this  difference,  that,  while  the 
renaissance  writers  fell  short  of  their  pattern,  the 
modern  schools  of  romance  have  outgone  their  mas- 
ters— not  perhaps  in  the  intellectual — but  certainly 
in  the  artistic  value  of  their  product.  Mediaeval 
literature,  wonderful  and  stimulating  as  a  whole  and 
beautiful  here  and  there  in  details  of  execution,  affords 
few  models  of  technical  perfection.  The  civilization 
which  it  reflected,  though  higher  in  its  possibilities 
than  the  classic  civilizations,  had  not  yet  arrived  at  an 
equal  grade  of  development,  was  inferior  in  intelli- 
gence and  the  matured  results  of  long  culture.  The 
epithets  of  Gothic  ignorance,  rudeness,  and  barbarism, 
which  the  eighteenth-century  critics  applied  so  freely 
to  all  the  issue  of  the  so-called  dark  ages,  were  not 
entirely  without  justification.  Dante  is  almost  the 
only  strictly  mediaeval  poet  in  whose  vv^ork  the  form 
seems  adequate  to  the  content;  for  Boccaccio  and 
Petrarca  stand  already  on  the  sill  of  the  renaissance. 

In  the  arts  of  design  the  case  was  partly  reversed.  If 
the  artists  of  the  renaissance  did  not  equal  the  Greeks 
in  sculpture  and  architecture,  they  probably  excelled 
them  in  painting.  On  the  other  hand,  the  restorers 
of  Gothic  have  never  quite  learned  the  secret  of  the 
mediaeval  builders.  However,  if  the  analogy  is  not 
pushed  too  far,  the  romantic  revival  may  be  regarded 
as  a  faint  counterpart  of  the  renaissance.  Just  as,  in 
the  fifteenth  century,  the  fragments  of  a  half-forgotten 
civilization  were  pieced  together;  Greek  manuscripts 
sought  out,  cleaned,  edited,  and  printed:  statues,  coins. 


30  ^  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

vases  dug  up  and  ranged  in  museums:  debris  cleared 
away  from  temples,  amphitheaters,  basilicas;  till 
gradually  the  complete  image  of  the  antique  world 
grew  forth  in  august  beauty,  kindling  an  excitement 
of  mind  to  which  there  are  few  parallels  in  history; 
so,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  the  despised  ages  of 
monkery,  feudalism,  and  superstition  began  to  reassert 
their  claims  upon  the  imagination.  Ruined  castles 
and  abbeys,  coats  of  mail,  illuminated  missals,  manu- 
script romances,  black-letter  ballads,  old  tapestries, 
and  wood  carvings  acquired  a  new  value.  Antiquaries 
and  virtuosos  first,  and  then  poets  and  romancers, 
reconstructed  in  turn  an  image  of  mediseval  society. 

True,  the  later  movement  was  much  the  weaker  of 
the  two.     No  such  fissure  yawned   between  modern 
times  and  the  Middle  Ages  as  had  been  opened  between 
the  ancient  world  and  the  Middle  Ages  by  the  ruin  of 
the  Roman  state  and  by    the  barbarian  migrations. 
Nor  had  ten  centuries  of  rubbish  accumulated  over  the 
remains  of  mediaeval  culture.     In  1700  the  Middle  Ages 
were  not  yet  so  very  remote.      The  nations  and  lan- 
guages of  Europe  continued  in  nearly  the  same  limits 
which  had  bounded  them  two  centuries  before.     The 
progress  in  the  sciences  and  mechanic  arts,  the  dis- 
covery and   colonizing  of  America,  the    invention   of 
printing   and   gunpowder,    and    the  Protestant  refor- 
mation had  indeed  drawn  deep  lines  between  modern 
and    mediaeval  life.     Christianity,   however,  formed  a 
connecting  link,  though,    in   Protestant  countries,  the 
continuity  between  the  earlier  and  later  forms  of  the 
religion  had  been  interrupted.      One  has  but  to  com- 
pare the  list  of  the  pilgrims  whom  Chaucer  met  at  the 
Tabard,    with  the    company   that  Captain   Sentry    or 


The  <^ugustans.  31 

Peregrine  Pickle  would  be  likely  to  encounter  at 
a  suburban  inn,  to  see  how  the  face  of  English 
society  had  changed  between  1400  and  1700.  What 
has  become  of  the  knight,  the  prioress,  the  sumner, 
the  monk,  pardoner,  squire,  alchemist,  friar;  and 
where  can  they  or  their  equivalents  be  found  in  all 
England? 

The  limitations    of   my  subject  will   oblige    me   to 
treat  the  English  romantic  movement  as  a  chapter  in 
literary  history,  even  at  the  risk  of  seeming  to  adopt  a 
narrow  method.     Yet  it  would  be  unphilosophical  to 
consider  it  as  a  merely  aesthetic  affair,    and  to  lose 
sight  altogether  of  its  deeper  springs  in  the  religious 
and  ethical  currents  of  the  time.     For  it  was,  in  part, 
a  return  of   warmth    and  color  into  English  letters;!' 
and  that  was  only  a  symptom  of  the  return  of  warmth 
and  color — that  is,  of  emotion  and  imagination — into|; 
English  life  and  thought:  into  the  Church,  into  poli- 
tics, into  philosophy.     Romanticism,  which  sought  to 
evoke  from  the  pasta  beauty  that  it  found  wanting  in|:    j 
the  present,  was  but  one  phase  of  that  revolt  against     ' 
the  coldness  and  spiritual  deadness  of   the  first  half 
of  the  eighteenth  century  which  had  other  sides  in  the     ^" '^/ 
idealism  of  Berkeley,  in  the  Methodist  and  Evangel- 
ical jrevival  led  by  Wesley  and  Whitefield,  and  in  the 
sentimentalism  which  manifested  itself  in  the  writings 
of  Richardson  and  Sterne.     Corresponding  to  these  on 
the  Continent  were  German  pietism,  the  transcenden- 
tal philosophy  of  Kant  and  his  continuators,  and  the 
emotional  excesses  of  works  like   Rousseau's  "  Nou- 
velle  H^loise  "  and  Goethe's  "Sorrows  of  Werther. " 

Romanticism    was  something    more,    then,    than  a 
new    literary    mode;  a  taste   cultivated  by  dilettante 


>-■! 


32  zA  History  of  English  l^omanticism. 

virtuosos,  like  Horace  Walpole,  college  recluses  like 
Gray,  and  antiquarian  scholars  like  Joseph  and 
Thomas  Warton.  It  was  the  effort  of  the  poetic  im- 
agination to  create  for  itself  a  richer  environment; 
but  it  was  also,  in  its  deeper  significance,  a  reaching 
out  of  the  human  spirit  after  a  more  ideal  type  of 
religion  and  ethics  than  it  could  find  in  the  official 
churchmanship  and  the  formal  morality  of  the  time. 
Mr.  Leslie  Stephen*  points  out  the  connection 
between  the  three  currents  of  tendency  known  as 
sentimentalism,  romanticism,  and  naturalism.  He 
explains,  to  be  sure,  that  the  first  English  sentiment- 
alists, such  as  Richardson  and  Sterne,  were  anything 
but  romantic.  "A  more  modern  sentimentalist  would 
probably  express  his  feelings  f  by  describing  some  past 
state  of  society.  He  would  paint  some  ideal  society 
in  mediaeval  times  and  revive  the  holy  monk  and  the 
humble  nun  for  our  edification."  He  attributes  the 
subsequent  interest  in  the  Middle  Ages  to  the  progress 
made  in  historical  inquiries  during  the  last  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  to  the  consequent  growth 
of  antiquarianism.  "Men  like  Malone  and  Stevens 
were  beginning  those  painful  researches  which  have 
accumulated  a  whole  literature  upon  the  scanty 
records  of  our  early  dramatists.  Gray,  the  most 
learned  of  poets,  had  vaguely  designed  a  history  of 
English  poetry,  and  the  design  was  executed  with 
great  industry  by  Thomas  Warton.  His  brother 
Joseph  ventured  to  uphold  the  then  paradoxical  thesis 

*  "  History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  Vol. 
II.  chap.  xii.  section  vii. 

f  Sentimentalism  approaches  its  subject  through'  the  feelings; 
romanticism  through  the  imagination. 


The  a/Iugusians.  33 

that  Spenser  was  as  great  a  man  as  Pope.  Every- 
where a  new  interest  was  awakening  in  the  minuter 
details  of  the  past."  At  first,  Mr.  Stephen  says,  the 
result  of  these  inquiries  was  "an  unreasonable  con- 
tempt for  the  past.  The  modern  philosopher,  who 
could  spin  all  knowledge  out  of  his  own  brain;  the 
skeptic,  who  had  exploded  the  ancient  dogmas;  or  the 
free-thinker  of  any  shade,  who  rejoiced  in  the  destruc- 
tion of  ecclesiastical  tyranny,  gloried  in  his  conscious 
superiority  to  his  forefathers.  Whatever  was  old  was 
absurd;  and  Gothic — an  epithet  applied  to  all  me- 
diaeval art,  philosophy,  or  social  order — became  a 
simple  term  of  contempt."  But  "an  antiquarian  is 
naturally  a  conservative,  and  men  soon  began  to  love 
the  times  whose  peculiarities  they  were  so  diligently 
studying.  Men  of  imaginative  minds  promptly  made 
the  discovery  that  a  new  source  of  pleasure  might 
be  derived  from  these  dry  records.  .  .  The  '  return 
to  nature'  expresses  a  sentiment  which  underlies  .  .  . 
both  the  sentimental  and  romantic  movements.  .  . 
To  return  to  nature  is,  in  one  sense,  to  find  a  new 
expression  for  emotions  which  have  been  repressed 
by  existing  conventions;  or,  in  another,  to  return  to 
some  simpler  social  order  which  had  not  yet  suffered  v 
from  those  conventions.  The  artificiality  attributed 
to  the  eighteenth  century  seems  to  mean  that  men 
were  content  to  regulate  their  thoughts  and  lives  by 
rules  not  traceable  to  first  principles,  but  dependent 
upon  a  set  of  special  and  exceptional  conditions.  .  . 
To  get  out  of  the  ruts,  or  cast  off  the  obsolete 
shackles,  two  methods  might  be  adopted.  The  intel- 
lectual horizon  might  be  widened  by  including  a 
greater  number  of  ages  and  countries;  or  men  might 


34  e^  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

try  to  fall  back  upon  the  thoughts  and  emotions  com- 
mon to  all  races,  and  so  cast  off  the  superficial  incrus- 
tation. The  first  method,  that  of  the  romanticists, 
aims  at  increasing  our  knowledge:  the  second,  that 
of  the  naturalistic  school,  at  basing  our  philosophy  on 
deeper  principles."* 

The  classic,  or  pseudo-classic,  period  of  English 
^literature  lasted  from  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
till  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Inasmuch  as 
the  romantic  revival  was  a  protest  against  this  reign- 
ing mode,  it  becomes  necessary  to  inquire  a  little 
more  closely  what  we  mean  when  we  say  that  the  time 
of  Queen  Anne  and  the  first  two  Georges  was  our 
Augustan  or  classical  age.  In  what  sense  was  it 
classical?  And  was  it  any  more  classical  than  the 
time  of  Milton,  for  example,  or  the  time  of  Landor? 
If   the    "Dunciad,"   and    the    ''Essay  on   Man,"  are 

*  Ruskin,  too,  indicates  the  common  element  in  romanticism  and 
naturalism — a  desire  to  escape  fr^m  the  Augustan  formalism.  I 
condense  the  passage  slightly  :  "To  powder  the  hair,  to  patch  the 
cheek,  to  hoop  the  body,  to  buckle  the  foot,  were  all  part  and  parcel 
of  the  same  system  which  reduced  streets  to  brick  walls  and  pictures 
to  brown  stains.  Reaction  from  this  state  was  inevitable,  and 
accordingly  men  steal  out  to  the  fields  and  mountains;  and,  findmg 
among  these  color  and  liberty  and  variety  and  power,  rejoice  in  all 
the  wildest  shattering  of  the  mountain  side,  as  an  opposition  to 
Gower  Street.  It  is  not,  however,  only  to  existing  inanimate  nature 
that  our  want  of  beauty  in  person  and  dress  has  driven  us.  The 
imagination  of  it,  as  it  was  seen  in  our  ancestors,  haunts  us  continu- 
ally. We  look  fondly  back  to  the  manners  of  the  age  of  chivalry. 
The  furniture  and  personages  of  our  romance  are  sought  in  the 
centuries  which  we  profess  to  have  surpassed  in  everything.  .  . 
This  romantic  love  of  beauty,  forced  to  seek  in  history  and  in 
external  nature  the  satisfaction  it  cannot  find  in  ordinary  life." — 
Modern  Painters,  Vol.  III.  p.  260. 


The  <iAnffustans.  35 


"^6 


classical,  what  is  Keats'  "Hyperion"?  And  with 
what  propriety  can  we  bring  under  a  common  rubric 
things  so  far  asunder  as  Prior's  "Carmen  Seculare  " 
and  Tennyson's  "Ulysses,"  or  as  Gay's  "Trivia" 
and  Swinburne's  "Atalanta  in  Calydon"  ?  Evidently 
the  Queen  Anne  writers  took  hold  of  the  antique 
by  a  different  side  from  our  nineteenth-century  poets. 
Their  classicism  was  of  a  special  type.  It  was,  as  has 
been  often  pointed  out,  more  Latin  than  Greek,  and 
more  French  than  Latin.*  It  was,  as  has  likewise 
been  said,  "a  classicism  in  red  heels  and  a  periwig." 
Victor  Hugo  speaks  of  "cette  poesie  fardee, 
mouchetee,  poudrec,  du  dix-huitieme  siecle,  cette 
litterature  a  paniers,  a  pompons  et  a  falbalas."  f  The 
costumes  of  Watteau  contrast  with  the  simple  folds 

*  Although  devout  in  their  admiration  for  antiquity,  the  writers 
of  the  seventeenth  century  have  by  no  means  always  clearly  grasped 
the  object  of  their  cult.  Though  they  may  understand  Latin  tradi- 
tion, they  have  certainly  never  entered  into  the  freer,  more  original 
spirit  of  Greek  art.  They  have  but  an  incomplete,  superficial  con- 
ception of  Hellenism.  .  .  Boileau  celebrates  but  does  not  under- 
stand Pindar.  .  .  The  seventeenth  century  comprehended  Homer 
no  better  than  Pindar.  What  we  miss  in  them  is  exactly  what  we 
like  best  in  his  epopee — the  vast  living  picture  of  a  semi-barbarous 
civilization.  .  .  No  society  could  be  less  fitted  than  that  of  the 
seventeenth  century  to  feel  and  understand  the  spirit  of  primitive 
antiquity.  In  order  to  appreciate  Homer,  it  was  thought  necessary 
to  civilize  the  barbarian,  make  him  a  scrupulous  writer,  and  convince 
him  that  the  word  "  ass"  is  a  "  very  noble  "  expression  in  Greek. — 
^^xLissier  :  ''The  Literary  Movement  in  France"  {Brinton^s  trans- 
lation, 1S97),  pp.  8-10.  So  Addison  apologizes  for  Homer's  failure 
to  observe  those  qualities  of  nicety,  correctness,  and  what  the  French 
call  hiens^ance  (decorum,)  the  necessity  of  which  had  only  been  found 
out  in  later  times.     See  The  Spectator,  No.  l6o. 

f  Preface  to  "  Cromwell." 


A 


36  <i/i  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

of  Greek  drapery  very  much  as  the  "Rape  of  the 
Lock,"  contrasts  with  the  Iliad,  or  one  of  Pope's 
pastorals  with  an  idyl  of  Theocritus.  The  times  were 
artificial  in  poetry  as  in  dress — 

"  Tea-cup  times  of  hood  and  hoop, 
And  when  the  patch  was  worn." 

Gentlemen  wore  powdered  wigs  instead  of  their  own 
hair,  and  the  powder  and  the  wig  both  got  into  their 
writing.  Perruque  was  the  nickname  applied  to  the 
classicists  by  the  French  romanticists  of  Hugo's 
generation,  who  wore  their  hair  long  and  flowing — 
chevetix  m^rovingiennes — and  affected  an  otitre  freedom 
in  the  cut  and  color  of  their  clothes.  Similarly  the 
Byronic  collar  became,  all  over  Europe,  the  symbol 
of  daring  independence  in  matters  of  taste  and 
opinion.  Its  careless  roll,  which  left  the  throat 
exposed,  seemed  to  assist  the  liberty  of  nature 
against   cramping   conventiohs. 

The  leading  Queen  Anne  writers  are  so  well  known 
that  a  somewhat  general  description  of  the  literary 
situation  in  England  at  the  time  of  Pope's  death 
(1744)  will  serve  as  an  answer  to  the  question,  how 
was  the  eighteenth  century  classical.  It  was  re- 
marked by  Thomas  Warton  *  that,  at  the  first  revival 
of  letters  in  the  sixteenth  century,  our  authors  were 
more  struck  by  the  marvelous  fables  and  inventions 
of  ancient  poets  than  by  the  justness  of  their  concep- 
tions and  the  purity  of  their  style.  In  other  words, 
the  men  of  the  renaissance  apprehended  the  ancient 
literatures   as    poets:  the    men    of   the   ^claircissement 

*  "  History  of  English  Poetry,"  section  Ixi.  Vol.  III.  p.  398  (edition 
of  1840). 


The  i^ugustans.  37 

apprehended  them  as  critics.  In  Elizabeth's  day  the 
new  learning  stimulated  English  genius  to  creative 
activity.  In  royal  progresses,  court  masques,  Lord 
Mayors'  shows,  and  public  pageants  of  all  kinds, 
mythology  ran  mad.  *'  Every  procession  was  a 
pantheon."  But  the  poets  were  not  careful  to  keep 
the  two  worlds  of  pagan  antiquity  and  mediaeval 
Christianity  distinct.  The  art  of  the  renaissance  was 
the  flower  of  a  double  root,  and  the  artists  used  their 
complex  stuff  naively.  The  "Faerie  Queene  "  is  the 
typical  work  of  the  English  renaissance;  there  hama- 
dryads, satyrs,  and  river  gods  mingle  unblushingly 
with  knights,  dragons,  sorcerers,  hermits,  and  per- 
sonified vices  and  virtues.  The  "  machinery "  of 
Homer  and  Vergil — the  ''  machinery  "  of  the  "Seven 
Champions  of  Christendom"  and  the  "Roman  de  la 
Rose "!  This  was  not  shocking  to  Spenser's  con- 
temporaries, but  it  seemed  quite  shocking  to  classical 
critics  a  century  later.  Even  Milton,  the  greatest 
scholar  among  English  poets,  but  whose  imagination 
was  a  strong  agent,  holding  strange  elements  in  solu- 
tion, incurred  their  censure  for  bringing  Saint  Peter 
and  the  sea-nymphs  into  dangerous  juxtaposition  in 
"Lycidas." 

But  by  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  the 
renaissance  schools  of  poetry  had  become  effete  in 
all  European  countries.  They  had  run  into  extrav- 
agances of  style,  into  a  vicious  manner  known  in 
Spain  as  Gongorism,  in  Italy  as  Marinism,  and  in 
I  England  best  exhibited  in  the  verse  of  Donne  and 
Cowley  and  the  rest  of  the  group  whom  Dr.  Johnson 
called  the  metaphysical  poets,  and  whose  Gothicism 
of   taste    Addison    ridiculed    in    his    Spectator    papers 


38  lA  History  of  English  l^omanticism. 

on  true  and  false  wit.  It  was  France  that  led  the 
reform  against  this  fashion.  Malherbe  and  Boileau 
insisted  upon  the  need  of  discarding  tawdry  orna- 
ments of  style  and  cultivating  simplicity,  clearness, 
propriety,  decorum,  moderation;  above  all,  good  sense. 
The  new  Academy,  founded  to  guard  the  purity  of 
the  French  language,  lent  its  weight  to  the  precepts 
of  the  critics,  who  applied  the  rules  of  Aristotle,  as 
commented  by  Longinus  and  Horace,  to  modern  con- 
ditions. The  appearance  of  a  number  of  admirable 
writers — Corneille,  Moliere,  Racine,  Bossuet,  La 
Fontaine,  La  Bruyere — simultaneously  with  this  criti- 
cal movement,  gave  an  authority  to  the  new  French 
literature  which  enabled  it  to  impose  its  principles 
upon  England  and  Germany  for  over  a  century.  For 
the  creative  literature  of  France  conformed  its  prac- 
tice, in  the  main,  to  the  theory  of  French  criticism; 
though  not,  in  the  case  of  Corneille,  without  some 
protest;  and  not,  in  the  case  of  Regnier,  without  open 
defiance.  This  authority  was  re-enforced  by  the  polit- 
ical glories  and  social  cc/af  of  the  st'h/e  de  Louis 
Quatorze. 

It  happened  that  at  this  time  the  Stuart  court  was 
in  exile,  and  in  the  train  of  Henrietta  Maria  at  Paris, 
or  scattered  elsewhere  through  France,  were  many 
royalist  men  of  letters,  Etherege,  Waller,  Cowley,  and 
others,  who  brought  back  with  them  to  England  in 
1660  an  acquaintance  with  this  new  French  literature 
and  a  belief  in  its  aesthetic  code.  That  French  in- 
fluence would  have  spread  into  England  without  the 
aid  of  these  political  accidents  is  doubtless  true,  as  it 
is  also  true  that  a  reform  of  English  versification  and 
poetic  style  would  have  worked  itself  out  upon  native 


The  zAugustans.  39 

lines  independent  of  foreign  example,  and  even  had 
there  been  no  such  thing  as  French  literature.  Mr. 
Gosse  has  pointed  out  couplets  of  Waller,  written  as 
early  as  1623,  which  have  the  formal  precision  of 
Pope's;  and  the  famous  passage  about  the  Thames  in 
Denham's  "Cooper's  Hill"  (1642)  anticipates  the 
best  performance  of  Augustan  verse: 

"  O  could  I  flow  like  thee,  and  make  thy  stream 
My  great  example,  as  it  is  my  theme! 
Though  deep,  yet  clear,  though  gentle,  yet  not  dull, 
Strong  without  rage,  without  o'erflowing  full." 

However,  as  to  the  general  fact  of  the  powerful  im- 
pact of  French  upon  English  literary  fashions,  in  the 
latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  there  can  be 
no  dispute.* 

This  change  of  style  was  symptomatic  of  a  corre- 
sponding change  in  the  national  temper.  It  was  the 
mission  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  assert  the  uni- 
versality of  law  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  sufficiency  of 
the  reason  to  discover  the  laws  which  govern  in  every 
province:  a  service  which  we  now,  perhaps,  under- 
value in  our  impatience  with  the  formalism  which 
was  its  outward  sign.  Hence  its  dislike  of  irregu- 
larity in  art  and  irrationality  in  religion.  England, 
in  particular,  was  tired  of  unchartered  freedom,  of 
spiritual  as  well  as  of  literary  anarchy.  The  religious 
tension  of  the  Commonwealth  period  had  relaxed — 
men  cannot  be  always  at  the  heroic  pitch — and  theo- 
logical disputes  had  issued  in  indifference  and  a  skep- 

*See,  for  a  fuller  discussion  of  this  subject,  "From  Shakspere  to 
Pope  :  An  Inquiry  into  the  Causes  and  Phenomena  of  the  Rise  of 
Classical  Poetry  in  England,"  by  Edmund  Gosse,   1885. 


40  c//  History  of  English  l^pmanticism. 

ticism  which  took  the  form  of  deism,  or  "natural 
religion."  But  the  deists  were  felt  to  be  a  nuisance. 
They  were  unsettling  opinions  and  disturbing  that 
decent  conformity  with  generally  received  beliefs 
which  it  is  the  part  of  a  good  citizen  to  maintain. 
Addison  instructs  his  readers  that,  in  the  absence  of 
certainty,  it  is  the  part  of  a  prudent  man  to  choose 
the  safe  side  and  make  friends  with  God.  The  free- 
thinking  Chesterfield  *  tells  his  son  that  the  profes- 
sion of  atheism  is  ill-bred.  De  Foe,  Swift,  Richardson, 
Fielding,  Johnson  all  attack  infidelity.  "Conform! 
conform! "  said  in  effect  the  most  authoritative 
writers  of  the  century.  "Be  sensible:  go  to  church: 
pay  your  rates:  don't  be  a  vulgar  deist — a  fellow  like 
Toland  who  is  poor  and  has  no  social  position.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  you  need  not  be  a  fanatic  or 
superstitious,  or  an  enthusiast.  Above  all,  pas  de 
zUe!  " 

"Theology,"  says  Leslie  Stephen,  "was,  for  the 
most  part,  almost  as  deistical  as  the  deists.  A  hatred 
for  enthusiasm  was  as  strongly  impressed  upon  the 
whole  character  of  contemporary  thought  as  a  hatred 
of  skepticism.  .  .  A  good  common-sense  religion 
should  be  taken  for  granted  and  no  questions  asked. 
,  .  With  Shakspere,  or  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  or 
Jeremy  Taylor,  or  Milton,  man  is  contemplated  in 
his  relations  to  the  universe;  he  is  in  presence  of  eter- 
nity and  infinity;  life  is  a  brief  drama;  heaven  and 
hell  are  behind  the  veil  of  phenomena;  at  every  step 

*  The  cold-hearted,  polished  Chesterfield  is  a  very  representative 
figure.  Johnson,  who  was  really  devout,  angrily  affirmed  that  his 
celebrated  letters  taught  "  the  morality  of  a  whore  with  the  manners 
of  a  dancing-master." 


The  eAugustans.  41 

our  friends  vanish  into  the  abyss  of  ever  present  mys- 
tery. To  all  such  thoughts  the  writers  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  seemed  to  close  their  eyes  as  resolutely 
as  possible.  .  .  The  absence  of  any  deeper  specula- 
tive ground  makes  the  immediate  practical  questions 
of  life  all  the  more  interesting.  We  know  not  what 
we  are,  nor  whither  we  are  going,  nor  whence  we 
come;  but  we  can,  by  the  help  of  common  sense,  dis- 
cover a  sufficient  share  of  moral  maxims  for  our  guid- 
ance in  life.  .  .  Knowledge  of  human  nature,  as  it 
actually  presented  itself  in  the  shifting  scene  before 
them,  and  a  vivid  appreciation  of  the  importance  of 
the  moral  law,  are  the  staple  of  the  best  literature  of 
the  time."* 

The  God  of  the  deists  was,  in  truth,  hardly  more 
impersonal  than  the  abstraction  worshiped  by  the 
orthodox — the  "  Great  Being  "  of  Addison's  essays,  the 
"Great  First  Cause"  of  Pope's  "Universal  Prayer," 
invoked  indifferently  as  "  Jehovah,  Jove,  or  Lord." 
Dryden  and  Pope  were  professed  Catholics,  but  there 
is  nothing  to  distinguish  their  so-called  sacred  poetry 
from  that  of  their  Protestant  contemporaries.  Con- 
trast the  mere  polemics  of  "The  Hind  and  the  Pan- 
ther "  with  really  Catholic  poems  like  Southwell's 
"  Burning  Babe  "  and  Crashaw's  "  Flaming  Heart,"  or 
even  with  Newman's  "Dream  of  Gerontius. "  In  his 
"  Essay  on  Man,"  Pope  versified,  without  well  un- 
derstanding, the  optimistic  deism  of  Leibnitz,  as 
expounded  by  Shaftesbury  and  Bolingbroke.  The  An- 
glican Church  itself  was  in  a  strange  condition,  when 

*  "  History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  Vol. 
II.  chap.  xii.  section  iv.  See  also  "  Selections  from  Newman,"  by 
Lewis  E.  Gates,  Introduction,  pp.  xlvii-xlviii.  (1895). 


42  zA  History  of  English  l^omanticism. 

Jonathan  Swift,  a  dean  and  would-be  bishop,  came  to 
its  defense  with  his  "  Tale  of  a  Tub  "  and  his  ironical 
"Argument  against  the  Abolition  of  Christianity." 
Among  the  Queen  Anne  wits  Addison  was  the  man  of 
most  genuine  religious  feeling.  He  is  always  rever- 
ent, and  "the  feeling  infinite"  stirs  faintly  in  one  or 
two  of  his  hymns.  But,  in  general,  his  religion  is  of 
the  rationalizing  type,  a  religion  of  common  sense, 
a  belief  resting  upon  logical  deductions,  a  system  of 
ethics  in  which  the  supernatural  is  reduced  to  the 
lowest  terms,  and  from  which  the  glooms  and  fervors 
of  a  deep  spiritual  experience  are  almost  entirely 
absent.  This  "parson  in  a  tie-wig"  is  constantly 
preaching  against  zeal,  enthusiasm,  superstition,  mys- 
ticism, and  recommending  a  moderate,  cheerful,  and 
reasonable  religion.*  It  is  instructive  to  contrast  his 
amused  contempt  for  popular  beliefs  in  ghosts,  witches, 
dreams,  prognostications,  and  the  like,  with  the  re- 
awakened interest  in  folk  lore  evidenced  by  such  a 
book  as  Scott's  "  Demonology  and  Witchcraft." 

Queen  Anne  literature    was  classical,    then,    in   its 
lack  of  those  elements  of  mystery  and  aspiration  which 

we  have  found  described  as  of  the  essence  of  roman- 
.  .  s 

ticism.  It  was  emphatically  a  literature  of  this  world. 
It  ignored  all  vague  emotion,  the  phenomena  of  sub-  | 
consciousness,  "  the  electric  chain  wherewith  we  are 
darkly  bound,"  the  shadow  that  rounds  man's  little 
life,  and  fixed  its  attention  only  upon  what  it  could 
thoroughly  comprehend,  f     Thereby  it  escaped  obscu- 

*  See  especially  Spectator,  Nos.  185,  186,  201,  381,  and  494. 

f  The  classical  Landor's  impatience  of  mysticism  explains  his  dis- 
like of  Plato,  the  mystic  among  Greeks.  Diogenes  says  to  Plato  : 
"I   meddle  not  at  present  with  infinity  or  eternity:  when    I    can 


I 


The  eAugustans.  43 

rity.    The  writings  of  the  Augustans   in  both  verse 
and   prose  are  distinguished  by  a  perfect  clearness,  |>^t;^ 
but  it  is  a  clearness  without  subtlety  or  depth.     They  ' 
never  try  to  express  a  thought,  or  to  utter  a  feeling,        \ 
that    is    not    easily    intelligible.     The    mysticism   of 
Wordsworth,  the  incoherence  of  Shelley,  the  darkness 
of  Browning — to  take   only   modern    instances — pro- 
ceed, however,  not  from   inferior  art,    but  from    the; 
greater  difficulty  of  finding  expression  for  a  very  dif- 
ferent order  of  ideas. 

Again  the  literature  of  the  Restoration  and  Queen 
Anne  periods — which  may  be  regarded  as  one,  for ' 
present  purposes — was  classical,  or  at  least  unroman- 
tic,  in  its  self-restraint,  its  objectivity,  and  its  lack  of 
curiosity;  or,  as  a  hostile  criticism  would  put  it,  in  its 
coldness  of  feeling,  the  tameness  of  its  imagination, 
and  its  narrow  and  imperfect  sense  of  beauty.  It  was 
a  literature  not  simply  of  this  world,  but  of  ^/le  world, 
of  the  i^eau  nionde,  high  life,  fashion,  society,  the  court 
and  the  town,  the  salons,  clubs,  coffee-houses,  assem- 
blies, ombre-parties.  It  was  social,  urban,  gregarious, 
intensely  though  not  broadly  human.  It  cared  little  for 
the  country  or  outward  nature,  and  nothing  for  the  life 
of  remote  times  and  places.  Its  interest  was  centered 
upon  civilization  and  upon  that  peculiarly  artificial 
type  of  civilization  which  it  found  prevailing.  It  was 
as  indifferent  to  Venice,  Switzerland,  the  Alhambra, 
the  Nile,  the  American  forests,  and  the  islands  of  the 
South  Sea  as  it  was  to  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  man- 
ners of  Scotch  Highlanders.     The  sensitiveness  to  the 

comprehend  them,  I  will  talk  about  them,"  "  Imaginary  Conver- 
sations," 2d  series,  Conversation  XV.  Landor's  contempt  for  Ger- 
man literature  is  significant. 


44  t^  History  of  English  'T^manticism. 

picturesque,   the  liking  for  local  color  and  for  what- 
ever is  striking,  characteristic,  and  peculiarly  national 
>'  in  foreign  ways  is  a  romantic  note.     The  eighteenth 
Ijl  century  disliked   ''strangeness  added  to  beauty";  it 
v \  T  disapproved    of   anything   original,    exotic,    tropical, 
I    bizarre    for  the   same   reason   that  it  disapproved  of 
'   mountains  and  Gothic  architecture. 

Professor  Gates  says  that  the  work  of  English  liter- 
ature during  the  first  quarter  of  the  present  century 
was  "  the  rediscovery  and  vindication  of  the  concrete. 
The  special  task  of  the  eighteenth  century  had  been 
to  order,  and  to  systematize,  and  to  name;  its  favorite 
methods  had  been  analysis  and  generalization.  It 
asked  for  no  new  experience.  .  .  The  abstract,  the 
typical,  the  general — these  were  everywhere  exalted 
at  the  expense  of  the  image,  the  specific  experience, 
the  vital  fact."*  Classical  tragedy,  e.  g.,  undertook 
to  present  only  the  universal,  abstract,  permanent 
truths  of  human  character  and  passion,  f     The  impres- 

*  "  Selections  from  Newman,"  Introduction,  pp.  xlvii-xlviii, 
■j-  Racine  observes  that  good  sense  and  reason  are  the  same  in  all 
ages.  What  is  the  result  of  this  generalization  ?  Heroes  can  be 
transported  from  epoch  to  epoch,  from  country  to  country,  without 
causing  surprise.  Their  Achilles  is  no  more  a  Greek  than  is  Porus 
an  Indian;  Andromache  feels  and  talks  like  a  seventeenth-century 
princess  :  Phsedra  experiences  the  remorse  of  a  Christian. — Pellis- 
sier,  "  Literary  Movement  in  France"  p.  i8. 

In  substituting  men  of  concrete,  individual  lives  for  the  ideal  fig- 
ures of  tragic  art,  romanticism  was  forced  to  determine  their  physi- 
ognomy by  a  host  of  local,  casual  details.  In  the  name  of  universal 
truth  the  classicists  rejected  the  coloring  of  time  and  place  ;  and  this 
is  precisely  what  the  romanticists  seek  under  the  name  of  particular 
reality. — Ibid.  p.  220.  Similarly  Montezuma's  Mexicans  in  Dryden's 
"Indian  Emperor"  have  no  more  national  individuality  than  the 
Spanish  Moors  in  his  "  Conquest  of  Granada."     The  only  attempt  at 


The  (iAugustans.  45 

sion  of  the  mysterious  East  upon  modern  travelers 
and  poets  like  Byron,   Southey,   De  Quincey,   Moore, 
Hugo,*  Ruckert,  and  Gerard  de  Nerval,  has  no  coun- 
terpart in  the  eighteenth  century.     The  Oriental  alle- 
gory or  moral  apologue,   as  practiced  by  Addison  in    ^ 
such  papers  as  "The  Vision  of  Mirza,"  and  by  John- 
son in  "Rasselas,"  is  rather  faintly  colored  and  gets^vX   >-- 
what  color  it  has  from  the  Old  Testament.     It  is  sig- 
nificant that  the  romantic  Collins  endeavored  to  give  a 
novel  turn  to  the  decayed  pastoral  by  writing  a  num- 
ber of  "  Oriental  Eclogues,"  in  which  dervishes  and 
camel-drivers  took  the  place  of  shepherds,  but  the  ex- 
periment was  not  a  lucky  one.     Milton  had  more  of 
the  East  in  his  imagination  than  any  of  his  success- 
ors.    His  "vulture  on  Imaus  bred,  whose  snowy  ridge 
the  roving  Tartar  bounds";  his  "plain   of   Sericana 
where  Chineses  drive  their  cany  wagons  light";  his 
"utmost  Indian  isle  Taprobane,"  are  touches  of  the 
picturesque  which  anticipate   a   more    modern    mood 
than  Addison's. 

"  The  difference,"  says  Matthew  Arnold,  "between 
genuine  poetry  and  the  poetry  of  Dryden,  Pope,  and  1 
all  their  school  is  briefly  this :  their  poetry  is  conceived 
and  composed  in  their  wits,  genuine  poetry  is  con- 
ceived and  composed  in  the  soul."  The  representative 
minds  of  the  eighteenth  century  were  such  as  Voltaire,  ,. 
the  master  of  persiflage,  destroying  superstition  with 


/ 


local  color  in  ' '  Aurungzebe  " — an  heroic  play  founded  on  the  his- 
tory of  a  contemporary  East  Indian  potentate  who  died  seven  years 
after  the  author — is  the  introduction  of  the  suttee,  and  one  or  two 
mentions  of  elephants. 

*  See   "  Les  Orientales  "   (Hugo)  and  Nerval's  "  Les   Nuits  du 
Rhamadan  "  and  "  La  Legende  du  Calife  Hakcm." 


46  iA  History  of  English  %)manticism. 

his  sourire  hideux;  Gibbon,  "  the  lord  of  irony,"  ''  sap- 
ping a  solemn  creed  with  solemn  sneer";  and  Hume, 
with  his   thorough-going  philosophic   skepticism,   his 
dry  Toryism,  and  cool   contempt  for  "  zeal  "  of  any 
kind.      The  characteristic  products  of    the  era  were 
satire,  burlesque,  and  travesty:   "  Hudibras,"  "Absa- 
lom   and  Achitophel,"    "The   Way    of    the   World," 
"Gulliver's   Travels"  and  "The  Rape  of  the  Lock." 
There  is  a  whole  Uterature  of  mockery:  parodies  like 
Prior's  "Ballad  on  the  Taking  of  Namur"  and  "The 
Country  Mouse  and  the  City  Mouse";  Buckingham's 
"  Rehearsal  "  and  Swift's    "Meditation  on  a  Broom- 
stick";     mock-heroics,     like     the     "  Dunciad "    and 
"  MacFlecknoe  "  and  Garth's  "  Dispensary,"  and  John 
Phillips'    "Splendid    Shilling"  and   Addison's    "  Ma- 
chinse  Gesticulantes";    Prior's    "Alma,"  a  burlesque 
of  philosophy;  Gay's  "Trivia"  and  "The  Shepherd's 
Week,"   and   "The   Beggars'    Opera"— a    "Newgate 
pastoral";    "Town    Eclogues"   by   Swift   and   Lady 
Montague    and    others.      Literature   was    a  polished 
mirror   in  which  the  gay  world   saw  its  own  grinning 
face.     It  threw  back  a  most  brilliant  picture   of  the 
surface  of  societ)^,  showed   manners  but  not  the  ele- 
mentary passions  of  human   nature.     As  a  whole,  it 
leaves  an  impression  of  hardness,  shallowness,  and  lev- 
ity.    The  polite  cynicism  of  Congreve,  the  ferocjious 
cynicism  of  Swift,  the  malice  of  Pope,  the  pleasantry 
of  Addison,  the  easy  worldliness  of  Prior  and  Gay  are 
seldom  relieved  by  any  touch  of  the  ideal.     The  prose 
of  the  time  was   excellent,  but  the  poetry  was   merely 
rhymed   prose.     The    recent  Queen   Anne  revival  in 
architecture,  dress,  and  bric-a-brac,  the  recrudescence 
of   society  verse   in   Dobson  and    others,   is    perhaps 


The  iAugusians.  47 

symptomatic  of  the  fact  that  the  present  generation 
has  entered  upon  a  prosaic  reaction  against  romantic 
excesses  and  we  are  finding  our  picturesque  in  that  era 
of  artifice  which  seemed  so  unpicturesque  to  our  fore- 
runners. The  sedan  chair,  the  blue  china,  the  fan, 
farthingale,  and  powdered  head  dress  have  now  got  the 
"  rime  of  age  "  and  are  seen  in  fascinating  perspective, 
even  as  the  mailed  courser,  the  buff  jerkin,  the  cowl, 
and  the  cloth-yard  shaft  were  seen  by  the  men  of 
Scott's  generation. 

Once  more,  the  eighteenth  century  was  classical  in 
its  respect  for  authority.  It  desired  to  put  itself 
under  discipline,  to  follow  the  rules,  to  discover  a  \  '  ■•; 
formula  of  correctness  in  all  the  arts,  to  set  up  a 
tribunal  of  taste  and  establish  canons  of  composition, 
to  maintain  standards,  copy  models  and  patterns, 
comply  with  conventions,  and  chastise  lawlessness. 
In  a  word,  its  spirit  was  academic.  Horace  was  its 
favorite  master — not  Horace  of  the  Odes,  but  Horace 
of  the  Satires  and  Epistles,  and  especially  Horace  as 
interpreted  by  Boileau.*  The  "  Ars  Poetica "  had 
been  englished  by  the  Earl  of  Roscommon,  and 
imitated  by  Boileau  in  his  "  L'Art  Poetique,"  which 
became  the  parent  of  a  numerous  progeny  in  England; 
among  others  an  "  Essay  on  Satire  "  and  an  "  Essay 
on  Poetry,"  by  the  Earl  of  Mulgrave;  f  an  "  Essay  on 

*The  rules  a  nation,  born  to  serve,  obeys; 
And  Boileau  still  in  right  of  Horace  sways. 

— Pope,  ''jEssay  on  Criticism." 
\  These  critical  verse  essays  seem  to  have  been  particularly  affected 
by  this  order  of  the  peerage  ;  for,   somewhat  later,  we  have  one, 
"On   Unnatural  Flights  in  Poetry,"  by  the  Earl  of  Lansdowne — 
"Granville  the  polite." 


48  tA  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

Translated  Verse"  by  the  Earl  of  Roscommon,  who, 
says  Addison,  ''makes  even  rules  a  noble  poetry  ";* 
and  Pope's  well-known  "  Essay  on  Criticism." 

The  doctrine  of  Pope's  essay  is,  in  brief,  follow 
Nature,  and  in  order  that  you  may  follow  Nature, 
observe  the  rules,  which  are  only  "Nature  metho- 
dized," and  also  imitate  the  ancients. 

"  Learn  hence  for  ancient  rules  a  just  esteem  ; 
To  copy  nature  is  to  copy  them." 

Thus  Vergil  when  he  started  to  compose  the  ^neid       i\ 
may  have  seemed  above  the  critic's  law,  but  when  he 
came   to   study   Homer,  he   found   that   Nature   and 
Homer  were  the  same.     Accordingly, 

' '  he  checks  the  bold  design, 
And  rules  as  strict  his  labor'd  work  confine," 

Not  to  Stimulate,  but  to  check,  to  confine,  to  regulate, 
is  the  unfailing  precept  of  this  whole  critical  school. 
Literature,  in  the  state  in  which  they  found  it,  appeared 
to  them  to  need  the  curb  more  than  the  spur, 

Addison's  scholarship  was  almost  exclusively 
Latin,  though  it  was  Vergilian  rather  than  Horatian. 
Macaulay  f  says  of  Addison's  "Remarks  on  Italy": 
"To  the  best  of  our  remembrance,  Addison  does  not 
mention  Dante,  Petrarch,  Boccaccio,  Boiardo,  Be^ni, 
Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  orMachiavelli.  He  coldly  tells  us 
that  at  Ferrara  he  saw  the  tomb  of  Ariosto,  and  that 
at  Venice  he  heard  the  gondoliers  sing  verses  of  Tasso. 
But  for  Tasso  and  Ariosto  he  cared  far  less  than  for 
Valerius  Flaccus  and  Sidonius  Apollinaris.     The  gentle 

*  "  Epistle  to  Sacheverel."  f  "  Essay  on  Addison." 


The  <^ugustans.  49 

flow  of  the  Ticino  brings  a  line  of  Silius  to  his  mind. 
The  sulphurous  stream  of  Albula  suggests  to  him 
several  passages  of  Martial.  But  he  has  not  a  word 
to  say  of  the  illustrious  dead  of  Santa  Croce;  he 
crosses  the  wood  of  Ravenna*  without  recollecting 
the  specter  huntsman,  and  wanders  up  and  down 
Rimini  without  one  thought  of  Francesca.  At  Paris 
he  had  eagerly  sought  an  introduction  to  Boileau; 
but  he  seems  not  to  have  been  at  all  aware  that  at 
Florence  he  was  in  the  vicinity  of  a  poet  with  whom 
Boileau  could  not  sustain  a  comparison:  of  the 
greatest  lyric  poet  of  modern  times  [!]  Vincenzio 
Filicaja.  .  .  The  truth  is  that  Addison  knew  little 
and  cared  less  about  the  literature  of  modern  Italy. 
His  favorite  models  were  Latin.  His  favorite  critics 
were  French.  Half  the  Tuscan  poetry  that  he  had 
read  seemed  to  him  monstrous  and  the  other  half 
tawdry."  f 

There  was  no  academy  in  England,  but  there  was 
a  critical  tradition  that  was  almost  as  influential. 
French  critics  gave  the  law:  Boileau,  Dacier,  LeBossu, 
Rapin,  Bouhours;  English  critics  promulgated  it:  Den- 
nis, Langbaine,  Rymer,  Gildon,  and  others  now  little 

*  Sweet  hour  of  twilight  ! — in  the  solitude 
Of  the  pine  forest,  and  the  silent  shore 
Which  bounds  Ravenna's  immemorial  wood, 

Rooted  where  once  the  Adrian  wave  flowed  o'er, 
To  where  the  last  Cssarian  fortress  stood, 

Evergreen  forest  !  which  Boccaccio's  lore 
And  Dryden's  lay  made  haunted  ground  to  me, 
How  have  I  loved  the  twilight  hour  and  thee  ! 

— Don  Juan. 
f  I  must  entirely   agree  with  Monsieur  Boileau,  that  one  verse  of 
Vergil  is  worth  all  the  clinquant  or  tinsel  of  Tasso. — Spectator,  No.  5. 


5©  e/^  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

read.  Three  writers  of  high  authority  in  three  suc- 
cessive generations — Dryden,  Addison,  and  Johnson — 
consolidated  a  body  of  literary  opinion  which  may  be 
described,  in  the  main,  as  classical,  and  as  consenting, 
though  with  minor  variations.  Thus  it  was  agreed  on 
all  hands  that  it  was  a  writer's  duty  to  be  "correct." 
It  was  well  indeed  to  be  "  bold,"  but  bold  with  discre- 
tion. Dryden  thought  Shakspere  a  greater  poet  than 
Jonson,  but  an  inferior  artist.  He  was  to  be  admired, 
but  not  approved.  Homer,  again,  it  was  generally 
conceded,  was  not  so  correct  as  Vergil,  though  he  had 
more  "fire."  Chesterfield  preferred  Vergil  to  Homer, 
and  both  of  them  to  Tasso.  But  of  all  epics  the  one 
he  read  with  most  pleasure  was  the  "Henriade."  As 
for  "Paradise  Lost,"  he  could  not  read  it  through. 
William  Walsh,  "  the  muses'  judge  and  friend,"  advised 
the  youthful  Pope  that  "there  was  one  way  still  left 
open  for  him,  by  which  he  might  excel  any  of  his  pred- 
ecessors, which  was  by  correctness;  that  though 
indeed  we  had  several  great  poets,  we  as  yet  could 
boast  of  none  that  were  perfectly  correct;  and  that 
therefore  he  advised  him  to  make  this  quality  his  par- 
ticular study."  "The  best  of  the  moderns  in  all 
languages,"  he  wrote  to  Pope,  "are  those  that  have 
the  nearest  copied  the  ancients."  Pope  was  thankful 
for  the  counsel  and  mentions  its  giver  in  the  "  Essay 
on  Criticism  "  as  one  who  had 

' '  taught  his  muse  to  sing, 
Prescribed  her  heights  and  pruned  her  tenJer  wing." 

But  what  was  correct?  In  the  drama,  e.  g.,  the  ob- 
servance of  the  unities  was  almost  universally  recom- 
mended,   but    by    no    means    universally    practiced. 


The  <iAugustans.  51 

Johnson,  himself  a  sturdy  disciple  of  Dryden  and 
Pope,  exposed  the  fallacy  of  that  stage  illusion,  on  the 
supposed  necessity  of  which  the  unities  of  time  and 
place  were  defended.  Yet  Johnson,  in  his  own  tragedy 
"  Irene,"  conformed  to  the  rules  of  Aristotle.  He  pro- 
nounced "Cato"  "  unquestionably  the  noblest  produc- 
tion of  Addison's  genius,"  but  acknowledged  that  its 
success  had  **  introduced,  or  confirmed  among  us,  the 
use  of  dialogue  too  declamatory,  of  unaffecting  elegance 
and  chill  philosophy."  On  the  other  hand  Addison 
had  small  regard  for  poetic  justice,  which  Johnson 
thought  ought  to  be  observed.  Addison  praised  old 
English  ballads,  which  Johnson  thought  mean  and  fool- 
ish; and  he  guardedly  commends*  "the  fairy  way  of 
writing,"  a  romantic  foppery  that  Johnson  despised. f 

Critical  opinion  was  pronounced  in  favor  of  separat- 
ing tragedy  and  comedy,  and  Addison  wrote  one  sen- 
tence which  condemns  half  the  plays  of  Shakspereand 
Fletcher:  "  The  tragi-comedy,  which  is  the  product  of 
the  English  theater,  is  one  of  the  most  monstrous  in- 
ventions that  ever  entered  into  a  poet's  thought."  | 
Dryden  made  some  experiments  in  tragi-comedy,  but, 
in  general,  classical  comedy  was  pure  comedy — the 
prose  comedy  of  manners — and  classical  tragedy  ad- 
mitted no  comic  intermixture.  Whether  tragedy 
should  be  in  rhyme,  after  the  French  manner,  or  in 
blank  verse,  after  the  precedent  of  the  old  English 
stage,  was  a  moot  point.  Dryden  at  first  argued  for 
rhyme  and  used  it  in  his  "heroic  plays";  and  it  is 
significant  that  he  defended  its  use  on  the  ground  that 

*  spectator.  No.  419. 
t  See  his  "  Life  of  Collins."  %  Spectator,  No.  40.    ^■ 


i-— 


52  tA  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

it  would  act  as  a  check  upon  the  poet's  fancy.  But 
afterward  he  grew  "weary  of  his  much-loved  mistress, 
rhyme,"  and  went  back  to  blank  verse  in  his  later 
plays. 

As  to  poetry  other  than  dramatic,  the  Restoration 
critics  were  at  one  in  judging  blank  verse  too  "  low  " 
for  a  poem  of  heroic  dimensions;  and  though  Ad- 
dison gave  it  the  preference  in  epic  poetry,  John- 
son was  its  persistent  foe,  and  regarded  it  as  little 
short  of  immoral.  But  for  that  matter.  Gray  could  en- 
dure no  blank  verse  outside  of  Milton.  This  is  curi- 
ous, that  rhyme,  a  mediaeval  invention,  should  have 
been  associated  in  the  last  century  with  the  classical 
school  of  poetry;  while  blank  verse,  the  nearest  Eng- 
lish equivalent  of  the  language  of  Attic  tragedy,  was  a 
shibboleth  of  romanticizing  poets,  like  Thomson  and 
Akenside.  The  reason  was  twofold:  rhyme  came 
stamped  with  the  authority  of  the  French  tragic  alex- 
andrine; and,  secondly,  it  meant  constraint  where 
blank  verse  meant  freedom,  "ancient  liberty,  recov- 
ered to  heroic  poem  from  the  troublesome  and  mod- 
ern bondage  of  rhyming."*  Pope,  among  his  many 
thousand  rhymed  couplets,  has  left  no  blank  verse  ex- 
cept the  few  lines  contributed  to  Thomson's  "Sea- 
sons." Even  the  heroic  couplet  as  written  by  earlier 
poets  was  felt  to  have  been  too  loose  in  structure. 
"  The  excellence  and  dignityof  it,"saysDryden,  "were 
never  fully  known  till  Mr.  Waller  taught  it;  he  first 
made  writing  easily  an  art;  first  showed  us  how  to  con- 
clude the  sense  most  commonly  in  distichs,  which,  in 
the  verse  of  those  before  him,  runs  on   for  So   many 

*  "  The  Verse":  Preface  to  "  Paradise  Lost." 


The  zAugustans.  55 

curves,  the  profile  of  a  Doric  capital,  which  probably 
owed. its  form  to  the  steady  hand  and  uncontrolled 
taste  of  the  designer.  To  put  faith  in  many  of  the 
theories  propounded  by  architectural  authorities  in 
the  last  century,  would  be  to  believe  that  some  of  the 
grandest  monuments  which  the  world  has  ever  seen 
raised,  owe  their  chief  beauty  to  an  accurate  knowl- 
edge of  arithmetic.  The  diameter  of  the  column  was 
divided  into  modules:  the  modules  were  divided  into 
minutes;  the  minutes  into  fractions  of  themselves.  A 
certain  height  was  allotted  to  the  shaft,  another  to  the 
entablature.  .  .  Sometimes  the  learned  discussed 
how  far  apart  the  columns  of  a  portico  might  be."* 

This  kind  of  mensuration  reminds  one  of  the  disputes 
between  French  critics  as  to  whether  the  unity  of 
time  meant  thirty  hours,  or  twenty-four,  or  twelve,  or 
the  actual  time  that  it  took  to  act  the  play;  or  of  the 
geometric  method  of  the  ''Saturday  papers"  in  the 
Spectator.  Addison  tries  "Paradise  Lost"  by  Aris- 
totle's rules  for  the  composition  of  an  epic.  Is  it 
the  narrative  of  a  single  great  action?  Does  it  begin 
in  medias  res,  as  is  proper,  or  ab  ovo  LedcB,  as  Horace 
has  said  that  an  epic  ought  not?  Does  it  bring  in  the 
introductory  matter  by  way  of  episode,  after  the  ap- 
proved recipe  of  Homer  and  Vergil?  Has  it  allegori- 
cal characters,  contrary  to  the  practice  of  the  ancients? 
Does  the  poet  intrude  personally  into  his  poem,  thus 
mixing  the  lyric  and  epic  styles?  etc.  Not  a  word  as 
to  Milton's  Puritanism,  or  his  Weltanschauufig,  or 
the  relation  of  his  work  to  its  environment.  Noth- 
ing of  that  historical  and  sympathetic  method — that 

*  "  History  of  the  Gothic  Revival,"  pp.  49-50  (edition  of  1872). 


$6  nA  History  of  English  T^omanticism. 

endeavor  to  put  the  reader  at  the  poet's  point  of 
view — by  which  modern  critics,  from  Lessing  to  Sainte- 
Beuve,  have  revolutionized  their  art.  Addison  looks 
at  "Paradise  Lost"  as  something  quite  distinct  from 
Milton :  as  a  manufactured  article  to  be  tested  by  com- 
paring it  with  standard  fabrics  by  recognized  makers, 
like  the  authors  of  the  Iliad  and  ^neid. 

When  the  Queen  Anne  poetry  took  a  serious 
turn,  the  generalizing  spirit  of  the  age  led  it  almost 
always  into  the  paths  of  ethical  and  didactic  verse. 
"It  stooped  to  truth  and  moralized  its  song,"  finding 
its  favorite  occupation  in  the  sententious  expression 
of  platitudes — the  epigram  in  satire,  the  maxim  in 
serious  work.  It  became  a  poetry  of  aphorisms, 
instructing  us  with  Pope  that 

"  Virtue  alone  is  happiness  below;" 

or,  with  Young,  that 

"  Procrastination  is  the  thief  of  time;  " 
or,  with  Johnson,  that 

"  Slow  rises  worth  by  poverty  depressed." 

When  it  attempted  to  deal  concretely  with  the  passions, 
it  found  itself  impotent.  Pope's  "Epistle  of  Eloisa 
to  Abelard  "  rings  hollow:  it  is  rhetoric,  not  poetry. 
The  closing  lines  of  "The  Dunciad  "— so  strangely 
overpraised  by  Thackeray — with  their  metallic  clank 
and  grandiose  verbiage,  are  not  truly  imaginative. 
The  poet  is  simply  working  himself  up  to  a  climax  of 
the  false  sublime,  as  an  orator  deliberately  attaches  a 
sounding  peroration  to  his  speech.  Pope  is  always 
"heard,"  never  "overheard." 


The  <^ugtistans.  57 

The  poverty  of  the  classical  period  in  lyrical  verse  is 
particularly  significant,  because  the  song  is  the  most 
primitive  and  spontaneous  kind  of  poetry,  and  the  most 
direct  utterance  of  personal  feeling.  Whatever  else 
the  poets  of  Pope's  time  could  do,  they  could  not  sing. 
They  are  the  despair  of  the  anthologists.*  Here  and 
there  among  the  brilliant  reasoners,  raconteurs,  and 
satirists  in  verse,  occurs  a  clever  epigrammatist  like 
Prior,  or  a  ballad  writer  like  Henry  Carey,  whose 
**  Sally  in  Our  Alley  "  shows  the  singing,  and  not  talk- 
ing, voice,  but  hardly  the  lyric  cry.  Gay's  "  Blackeyed 
Susan  "  has  genuine  quality,  though  its  rococo  graces  are 
more  than  half  artificial.  Sweet  William  is  very  much 
such  an  opera  sailor-man  as  Bumkinet  or  Grubbinol  is  a 
shepherd,  and  his  wooing  is  beribboned  with  conceits 
like  these : 

"  If  to  fair  India's  coast  we  sail, 

Thy  eyes  are  seen  in  diamonds  bright, 
Thy  breath  is  Afric's  spicy  gale, 

Thy  skin  is  ivory  so  white. 
Thus  every  beauteous  prospect  that  I  view, 
Wakes  in  my  soul  some  charm  of  lovely  Sue." 

It  was  the  same  with  the  poetry  of  outward  nature 
as  with  the  poetry  of  human  passion,  f  In  Addison's 
"Letter    from    Italy,"    in    Pope's    "Pastorals,"    and 

*  Palgrave  says  that  the  poetry  of  passion  was  deformed,  after  i66o, 
by  "  levity  and  an  artificial  tone";  and  that  it  lay  "  almost  dormant 
for  the  hundred  years  between  the  days  of  Wither  and  Suckling  and 
the  days  of  Burns  and  Cowper,"  "Golden  Treasury  "  (Sever  and 
Francis  edition,  1866),  pp.  379-80. 

f  Excepting  the  "  Nocturnal  Reverie"  of  Lady  Winchelsea,  and  a 
passage  or  two  in  the  ' '  Windsor  Forest  "  of  Pope,  the  poetry  of  the 
period  intervening  between  the  publication  of  the  "  Paradise  Lost" 


$8  <iA  History  of  English  'T(omanticism. 

"Windsor  Forest,"  the  imagery,  when  not  actually 
false,  is  vague  and  conventional,  and  the  language 
abounds  in  classical  insipidities,  epithets  that  describe 
nothing,  and  generalities  at  second  hand  from  older 
poets,  who  may  once,  perhaps,  have  written  with  their 
"eyes  upon  the  object."  Blushing  Flora  paints  the 
enameled  ground;  cheerful  murmurs  fluctuate  on  the 
gale;  Eridanus  through  flowery  meadows  strays; 
gay  gilded*  scenes  and  shining  prospects  rise;  while 
everywhere  are  balmy  zephyrs,  sylvan  shades,  wind- 
ing vales,  vocal  shores,  silver  floods,  crystal  springs, 
feathered  quires,  and  Phoebus  and  Philomel  and 
Ceres*  gifts  assist  the  purple  year.  It  was  after  this 
fashion  that  Pope  rendered  the  famous  moonlight 
passage  in  his  translation  of  the  Iliad: 

"  Then  shine  the  vales,  the  rocks  in  prospect  rise, 
A  flood  of  glory  bursts  from  all  the  skies,"  etc. 

"Strange  to  think  of  an  enthusiast,"  says  Words- 
worth, "reciting  these  verses  under  the  cope  of  a 
moonlight  sky,  without  having  his  raptures  in  the  least 
disturbed  by  a  suspicion  of  their  absurdity."  The 
poetic  diction  against  which  Wordsworth  protested 
was  an  outward  sign  of  the  classical  preference  for 
the  general  over  the  concrete.  The  vocabulary  was 
Latinized  because,  in  English,  the  mof  propre  is  com- 

and  the  "  Seasons  "  [1667-1726]  does  not  contain  a  single  new  image 
of  external  nature. —  Wordsworth,  Appendix  to  Lyrical  Ballads, 
(1815). 

*  Gild  is  a  perfect  earmark  of  eighteenth-century  descriptive  verse  : 
the  shore  is  gilded  and  so  are  groves,  clouds,  etc.  Contentment  gilds 
the  scene,  and  the  stars  gild  the  gloomy  night  (Parnell)  or  the  glow- 
ing pole  (Pope). 


7b e  <iAiigustans.  59 

monly  a  Saxon  word,  while  its  Latin  synonym  has  a 
convenient  indefiniteness  that  keeps  the  subject  at 
arm's  length.  Of  a  similar  tendency  was  the  favorite 
rhetorical  figure  of  personification,  which  gave  a  false 
air  of  life  to  abstractions  by  the  easy  process  of  spell- 
ing them  with  a  capital  letter.     Thus: 

"  From  bard  to  bard  the  frigid  caution  crept, 
Till  Declamation  roared  whilst  Passion  slept; 
Yet  still  did  Virtue  deign  the  stage  to  tread, 
Philosophy  remained  though  Nature  fled,  .  .   . 
Exulting  Folly  hailed  the  joyful  day, 
And  Pantomime  and  Song  confirmed  her  sway."  * 

Everything  was  personified:  Britannia,  Justice,  Lib- 
erty, Science,  Melancholy,  Night.  Even  vaccination 
for  the  smallpox  was  invoked  as  a  goddess, 

"  Inoculation,  heavenly  maid,  descend  !  "  f 

But  circumlocution  or  periphrasis  was  the  capital 
means  by  which  the  Augustan  poet  avoided  pre- 
cision and  attained  nobility  of  style.  It  enabled  him 
to  speak  of  a  woman  as  a  "nymph,"  or  a  "fair";  of 
sheep  as  "the  fleecy  care";  of  fishes  as  "  the  scaly 
tribe  ";  and  of  a  picket  fence  as  a  "  spiculated  paling." 
Lowell  says  of  Pope's  followers:  "As  the  master  had 
made  it  an  axiom  to  avoid  what  was  mean  or  low,  so 
the  disciples  endeavored  to  escape  from  what  was 
common.  This  they  contrived  by  the  ready  expedient 
of  the  periphrasis.  They  called  everything  something 
else.     A  boot  with  them  was 

"  '  The  shining  leather  that  encassd  the  limb.' 

♦Johnson,  "  Prologue  at  the  Opening  of  Drury  Lane,"  1747. 
f  See  Coleridge,  "  Biographia  Literaria,"  chap,  xviii. 


6o  ^  History  of  English  l^omanticism. 

Coffee  became 

"  '  The  fragrant  juice  of  Mocha's  berry  brown,'  "* 

"  For  the  direct  appeal  to  Nature,  and  the  naming 
of  specific  objects,"  says  Mr.  Gosse,f  "they  substi- 
tuted generalities  and  second-hand  allusions.  They  no 
longer  mentioned  the  gillyflower  and  the  daffodil,  but 
permitted  themselves  a  general  reference  to  Flora's 
vernal  wreath.  It  was  vulgar  to  say  that  the  moon  was 
rising;  the  gentlemanly  expression  was,  'Cynthia  is 
lifting  her  silver  horn!'  Women  became  nymphs  in 
this  new  phraseology,  fruits  became  '  the  treasures  of 
Pomona,'  a  horse  became  'the  impatient  courser.' 
The  result  of  coining  these  conventional  counters  for 
groups  of  ideas  was  that  the  personal,  the  exact,  was 
lost  in  literature.  Apples  were  the  treasures  of 
Pomona,  but  so  were  cherries,  too,  and  if  one  wished 
to  allude  to  peaches,  they  also  were  the  treasures 
of  Pomona.  This  decline  from  particular  to  general 
language  was  regarded  as  a  great  gain  in  elegance. 
It  was  supposed  that  to  use  one  of  these  genteel 
counters,  which  passed  for  coin  of  poetic  language, 
brought  the  speaker  closer  to  the  grace  of  Latinity. 
It  was  thought  that  the  old  direct  manner  of  speaking 
was  crude  and  futile;  that  a  romantic  poet  who  wished 
to  allude  to  caterpillars  could  do  so  without  any  exer- 
cise of  his  ingenuity  by  simply  introducing  the  word 
'  caterpillars,'  whereas  the  classical  poet  had  to  prove 
that  he  was  a  scholar  and  a  gentleman  by  inventing 
some  circumlocution,  such  as   'the  crawling  scourge 

*  Essay  on  Pope,  in  "  My  Study  Windows." 
f  "  From  Shakespere  to  Pope,"  pp.  g-ii. 


The  zAtigtistans.  6i 

that  smites  the  leafy  plain.'  .  .  In  the  generation 
that  succeeded  Pope  really  clever  writers  spoke  of  a 
'gelid  cistern,'  when  they  meant  a  cold  bath,  and  'the 
loud  hunter-crew '  when  they  meant  a  pack  of  fox- 
hounds." 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  men  of 
Pope's  generation,  including  Pope  himself,  were  alto- 
gether wanting  in  romantic  feeling.  There  is  a 
marked  romantic  accent  in  the  Countess  of  Winchel- 
sea's  ode  "To  the  Nightingale";  in  her  "Nocturnal 
Reverie";  in  Parnell's  "Night  Piece  on  Death,"  and 
in  the  work  of  several  Scotch  poets,  like  Allan  Ram- 
say and  Hamilton  of  Bangour,  whose  ballad,  "  The 
Braes  of  Yarrow,"  is  certainly  a  strange  poem  to  come 
out  of  the  heart  of  the  eighteenth  century.  But  these 
are  eddies  and  back  currents  in  the  stream  of  literary 
tendency.  We  are  always  in  danger  of  forgetting  that 
the  literature  of  an  age  does  not  express  its  entire, 
but  only  its  prevailing,  spirit.  There  is  commonly 
a  latent,  silent  body  of  thought  and  feeling  underneath 
which  remains  inarticulate,  or  nearly  so.  It  is  this 
prevailing  spirit  and  fashion  which  I  have  endeavored 
to  describe  in  the  present  chapter.  If  the  picture 
seems  to  lack  reli.:  or  to  be  in  any  way  exaggerated, 
the  reader  should  consult  the  chapters  on  "Classi- 
cism "  and  "  The  Pseudo-Classicists  "  in  M.  Pellissier's 
"  Literary  Movement  in  France,"  already  several  times 
referred  to.  They  describe  a  literary  situation  which 
had  a  very  exact  counterpart  in  England, 


CHAPTER  III. 
XLbc  Spenscrtans. 

Dissatisfaction  with  a  prevalent  mood  or  fashion 
in  literature  is  apt  to  express  itself  either  in  a  fresh 
and  independent  criticism  of  life,  or  in  a  reversion 
to  older  types.  But,  as  original  creative  genius  is 
not  always  forthcoming,  a  literary  revolution  com- 
monly begins  with  imitation.  It  seeks  inspiration  in 
the  past,  and  substitutes  a  new  set  of  models  as  differ- 
ent as  possible  from  those  which  it  finds  currently 
followed.  In  every  country  of  Europe  the  classical 
tradition  had  hidden  whatever  was  most  national, 
most  individual,  in  its  earlier  culture,  under  a  smooth, 
uniform  veneer.  To  break  away  from  modern  con- 
vention, England  and  Germany,  and  afterward  France, 
went  back  to  ancient  springs  of  national  life;  not 
always,  at  first,  wisely,  but  in  obedience  to  a  true 
instinct. 

How  far  did  any  knowledge  or  love  of  the  old 
romantic  literature  of  England  survive  among  the 
contemporaries  of  Dryden  and  Pope?  It  is  not  hard 
to  furnish  an  answer  to  this  question.  The  prefaces 
of  Dryden,  the  critical  treatises  of  Dennis,  Winstanley, 
Oldmixon,  Rymer,  Langbaine,  Gildon,  Shaftesbury, 
and  many  others,  together  with  hundreds  of  passages 
in  prologues  and  epilogues  to  plays;  in  periodical 
essays  like  the    Taf/er   and  Spectator;  in  verse  essays 

62 


The  Spenserians.  63 

like  Roscommon's,  Mulgrave's,  and  Pope's;  in  prefaces 
to  various  editions  of  Shakspere  and  Spenser;  in 
letters,  memoirs,  etc.,  supply  a  mass  of  testimony  to 
the  fact  that  neglect  and  contempt  had,  with  a  few- 
exceptions,  overtaken  all  English  writers  who  wrote 
before  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century.  The 
exceptions,  of  course,  were  those  supreme  masters 
whose  genius  prevailed  against  every  change  of  taste: 
Shakspere  and  Milton,  and,  in  a  less  degree,  Chaucer 
and  Spenser.  Of  authors  strictly  mediaeval,  Chaucer 
still  had  readers,  and  there  were  reprints  of  his  works 
in  1687,  1721  and  1737,*  although  no  critical  edition 
appeared  until  Tyrwhitt's  in  1775-78.  It  is  probable, 
however,  that  the  general  reader,  if  he  read  Chaucer 
at  all,  read  him  in  such  modernized  versions  as  Dry- 
den's  "Fables"  and  Pope's  ''January  and  May." 
Dryden's  preface  has  some  admirable  criticism  of 
Chaucer,  although  it  is  evident,  from  what  he  says 
about  the  old  poet's  versification,  that  the  secret  of 
Middle  English  scansion  and  pronunciation  had 
already  been  lost.  Prior  and  Pope,  who  seem  to  have 
been  attracted  chiefly  to  the  looser  among  the 
"  Canterbury  Tales,"  made  each  a  not  very  success- 
ful experiment  at  burlesque  imitation  of  Chaucerian 
language. 

Outside  of  Chaucer,  and  except  among  antiquarians 
and  professional  scholars,  there  was  no  remembrance 
of  the  whole  corpus  poetartwi  of  the  English  Middle 
Age:  none  of  the  metrical  romances,  rhymed  chroni- 
cles, saints'  legends,  miracle  plays,  minstrel  ballads, 
verse   homilies,  manuals  of   devotion,   animal   fables, 

*  A  small  portion  of  the  "  Canterbury  Tales."     Edited  by  Morell. 


64  t/1  History  of  English  '^Romanticism. 

courtly  or  popular  allegories  and  love  songs  of  the 
thirteenth,  fourteenth,  and  fifteenth  centuries.  Nor 
was  there  any  knowledge  or  care  about  the  master- 
pieces of  mediaeval  literature  in  other  languages  than 
English;  about  such  representative  works  as  the 
"  Nibelungenlied,"  the  ''Chanson  de  Roland,"  the 
"Roman  de  la  Rose,"  the  "  Parzival"  of  Wolfram 
von  Eschenbach,  the  "Tristan  "  of  Gottfried  of  Stras- 
burg,  the  "  Arme  Heinrich  "  of  Hartmann  von  Aue, 
the  chronicles  of  Villehardouin,  Joinville,  and  Frois- 
sart,  the  "  Morte  Artus,"  the  "Dies  Irse,"  the  lyrics 
of  the  troubadour  Bernart  de  Ventadour,  and  of  the 
minnesinger  Walther  von  der  Vogelweide,  the  Span- 
ish Romancero,  the  poems  of  the  Elder  Edda,  the 
romances  of  "Amis  et  Amile "  and  "  Aucassin  et 
Nicolete,"  the  writings  of  Villon,  the  "  De  Imitatione 
Christi  "  ascribed  to  Thomas  a  Kempis.  Dante  was 
a  great  name  and  fame,  but  he  was  virtually  un- 
read. 

There  is  nothing  strange  about  this;  many  of  these 
things  were  still  in  manuscript  and  in  unknown 
tongues.  Old  Norse,  Old  French,  Middle  High  Ger- 
man, Middle  English,  Mediaeval  Latin.  It  would 
be  hazardous  to  assert  that  the  general  reader,  or 
even  the  educated  reader,  of  to-day  has  much  more 
acquaintance  with  them  at  first  hand  than  his  ancestor 
of  the  eighteenth  century;  or  much  more  acquaintance 
than  he  has  with  ^schylus,  Thucydides,  and  Lu- 
cretius, at  first  hand.  But  it  may  be  confidently 
asserted  that  he  knows  much  more  about  them;  that 
he  thinks  them  worth  knowing  about;  and  that 
through  modern,  popular  versions  of  them — through 
poems,  historical  romances,  literary  histories,  essays, 


The  Spenserians.  65 

and  what  not — he  has  in  his  mind's  eye  a  picture  of 
the  Middle  Age,  perhaps  as  definite  and  fascinating  as 
the  picture  of  classical  antiquity.  That  he  has  so  is 
ow.ng  to  the  romantic  movement.  For  the  significant 
circumstance  about  the  attitude  of  the  last  century 
toward  the  whole  mediaeval  period  was,  not  its  igno- 
rance, but  its  incuriosity.  It  did  not  want  to  hear 
anything  about  it*     Now   and  then,  hints  Pope,  an 

*  The  sixteenth  [sic.  Qucere,  seventeenth  ?]  century  had  an  in- 
stinctive repugnance  for  the  crude  literature  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the 
product  of  so  strange  and  incoherent  a  civilization.  Here  classicism 
finds  nothing  but  grossness  and  barbarism,  never  suspecting  that  it 
might  contain  germs,  which,  with  time  and  genius,  might  develop 
into  a  poetical  growth,  doubtless  less  pure,  but  certainly  more  com- 
plex in  its  harmonies,  and  of  a  more  expressive  form  of  beauty.  The 
history  of  our  ancient  poetry,  traced  in  a  few  lines  by  Boileau, 
clearly  shows  to  what  degree  he  either  ignored  or  misrepresented  it. 
The  singular,  confused  architecture  of  Gothic  cathedrals  gave  those 
who  saw  beauty  in  symmetry  of  line  and  purity  of  form  but  further 
evidence  of  the  clumsiness  and  perverted  taste  of  our  ancestors.  All 
remembrance  of  the  great  poetic  works  of  the  Middle  Ages  is  com- 
pletely effaced.  No  one  supposes  in  those  barbarous  times  the  exist- 
ence of  ages  classical  also  in  their  way;  no  one  imagines  either  their 
heroic  songs  or  romances  of  adventure,  either  the  rich  bounty  of 
lyrical  styles  or  the  naive,  touching  crudity  of  the  Christian  drama. 
The  seventeenth  century  turned  disdainfully  away  from  the  monu- 
ments of  national  genius  discovered  by  it;  finding  them  sometimes 
shocking  in  their  rudeness,  sometimes  puerile  in  their  refinements. 
These  unfortunate  exhumations,  indeed,  only  serve  to  strengthen  its 
cult  for  a  simple,  correct  beauty,  the  models  of  which  are  found  in 
Greece  and  Rome.  Why  dream  of  penetrating  the  darkness  of  our 
origin  ?  Contemporary  society  is  far  too  self-satisfied  to  seek  dis- 
traction in  the  study  of  a  past  which  it  does  not  comprehend.  The 
subjects  and  heroes  of  domestic  history  are  also  prohibited,  Corneille 
is  Latin,  Racine  is  Greek;  the  very  name  of  Childebrande  suffices  to 
cover  an  epopee  with  ridicule. — Pellissier,    pp.  7-8. 


66  t^  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

antiquarian  pedant,  a  university  don,  might  affect  an 
admiration  for  some  obsolete  author: 

"  Chaucer's  worst  ribaldry  is  learned  by  rote, 
And  beastly  Skelton  heads  of  houses  quote: 
One  likes  no  language  but  the  '  Faery  Queen  '; 
A  Scot  will  fight  for  "  '  Christ's  Kirk  o'  the  Green.'  "  * 

But,  furthermore,  the  great  body  of  Elizabethan  and 

Stuart  literature  was  already  obsolescent.     Dramatists 

of   the    rank    of    Marlowe   and    Webster,    poets   like 

George  Herbert  and  Robert  Herrick— favorites  with 

our  own  generation — prose  authors  like  Sir  Thomas 

Browne— from  whom  Coleridge   and    Emerson    drew 

inspiration — had  fallen  into  "the  portion  of  weeds  and 

outworn  faces."     Even  writers  of  such  recent,  almost 

contemporary,   repute   as    Donne,    whom    Carew   had 

styled 

"  — a  king  who  ruled,  as  he  thought  fit, 

The  universal  monarchy  of  wit  "  : 

or  as  Cowley,  whom  Dryden  called  the  darling  of  his 
youth,  and  who  was  esteemed  in  his  own  lifetime  a 
better  poet  than  Milton;  even  Donne  and  Cowley 
had  no  longer  a  following.  Pope  "versified"  some 
of  Donne's  rugged  satires,  and  Johnson  quoted  pas- 
sages from  him  as  examples  of  the  bad  taste  of  the 
metaphysical  poets.  This  in  the  "Life  of  Cowley," 
with  which  Johnson  began  his  "Lives  of  the  Poets," 
as  though  Cowley  was  the  first  of  the  moderns.     But, 

"  Who  now  reads  Cowley  ?  " 

asks    Pope   in   1737.*      The  year  of  the  Restoration 
(1660)  draws  a  sharp  line  of  demarcation  between  the 

*  "  Epistle  to  Augustus." 


The  Spenserians.  67 

old  and  the  new.  In  1675,  the  year  after  Milton's 
death,  his  nephew,  Edward  Philips,  published  "  The- 
atrum  Poetarum,"  a  sort  of  biographical  dictionary 
of  ancient  and  modern  authors.  In  the  preface,  he 
says :  "As  for  the  antiquated  and  fallen  into  obscurity 
from  their  former  credit  and  reputation,  they  are,  for 
the  most  part,  those  that  have  written  beyond  the 
verge  of  the  present  age;  for  let  us  look  back  as  far 
as  about  thirty  or  forty  years,  and  we  shall  find  a 
profound  silence  of  the  poets  beyond  that  time,  except 
of  some  few  dramatics." 

This  testimony  is  the  more  convincing,  since  Philips 
was  something  of  a  laudator  temporis  acti.     He   praises 
several  old  English  poets  and  sneers  at  several  new 
ones,   such    as   Cleaveland  and    Davenant,  who    were 
high    in   favor   with    the  royal  party.     He  complains 
that  nothing  now  "relishes  so  well  as  what  is  written 
in  the  smooth  style  of  our  present  language,  taken  to 
be  of  late  so  much  refined";  that  "we  should  be  so 
compliant  with    the  French  custom,  as  to  follow  set 
fashions";     that     the     imitation     of     Corneille     has 
corrupted    the    English    stage;      and     that    Dryden, 
"complying  with  the  modefied  and  gallantish  humour 
of  the  time,"  has,  in  his  heroic  plays,  "indulged  a  little 
too  much  to  the  French  way  of  continual  rime."     One 
passage,  at  least,  in  Philips'  preface  has  been  thought 
to   be  an    echo  of    Milton's    own   judgment    on    the 
pretensions    of    the    new    school    of    poetry.      "Wit, 
ingenuity,  and  learning  in  verse;   even  elegancy  itself, 
though    that   comes    nearest,    are    one    thing.       True 
native  poetry  is  another;  in  which  there  is  a  certain 
air   and   spirit  which    perhaps    the  most    learned  and 
judicious  in    other  arts   do  not   perfectly  apprehend, 


68  o^  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

much  less  is  it  attainable  by  any  study  or  industry. 
Nay,  though  all  the  laws  of  heroic  poem,  all  the  laws 
of  tragedy  were  exactly  observed,  yet  still  this  tour 
entrejeant — this  poetic  energy,  if  I  may  so  call  it, 
would  be  required  to  give  life  to  all  the  rest;  which 
shines  through  the  roughest,  most  unpolished,  and 
antiquated  language,  and  may  haply  be  wanting  in 
the  most  polite  and  reformed.  Let  us  observe 
Spenser,  with  all  his  rusty,  obsolete  words,  with  all 
his  rough-hewn  clouterly  verses;  yet  take  him 
throughout,  and  we  shall  find  in  him  a  graceful  and 
poetic  majesty.  In  like  manner,  Shakspere  in  spite 
of  all  his  unfiled  expressions,  his  rambling  and 
indigested  fancies — the  laughter  of  the  critical — yet 
must  be  confessed  a  poet  above  many  that  go  beyond 
him  in  literature*  some  degrees." 

The  laughter  of  the  critical!  Let  us  pause  upon  the 
phrase,  for  it  is  a  key  to  the  whole  attitude  of  the 
Augustan  mind  toward  "our  old  tragick  poet." 
Shakspere  was  already  a  national  possession.  Indeed 
it  is  only  after  the  Restoration  that  we  find  any  clear 
recognition  of  him,  as  one  of  the  greatest — as  perhaps 
himself  the  very  greatest — of  the  dramatists  of  all 
time.  For  it  is  only  after  the  Restoration  that  criti- 
cism begins.  "  Dryden,"  says  Dr.  Johnson,  "may  be 
properly  considered  as  the  father  of  English  criticism, 
as  the  writer  who  first  taught  us  to  determine,  upon 
principles,  the  merit  of  composition.  .  .  Dryden's 
'Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy'  [1667]  was  the  first 
regular  and  valuable  treatise  on  the  art  of  writing."  f 
The  old  theater  was  dead  and  Shakspere  now  emerged 

*  I.e.,  learning.  +  "  Life  of  Dryden." 


'The  Spenserians.  69 

from  amid  its  ruins,  as  the  one  unquestioned  legacy 
of  the  Elizabethan  age  to  the  world's  literature.  He 
was  not  only  the  favorite  of  the  people,  but  in  a 
critical  time,  and  a  time  whose  canons  of  dramatic 
art  were  opposed  to  his  practice,  he  united  the  suf- 
frages of  all  the  authoritative  leaders  of  literary 
opinion.  Pope's  lines  are  conclusive  as  to  the  vener- 
ation in  which  Shakspere's  memory  was  held  a  century 
after  his  death. 

"  On  Avon's  banks,  where  flowers  eternal  blow, 
If  I  but  ask,  if  any  weed  can  grow  ; 
One  tragic  sentence  if  I  dare  deride 
Which  Betterton's  grave  action  dignified.    .    . 
How  will  our  fathers  rise  up  in  a  rage, 
And  swear,  all  shame  is  lost  in  George's  age.  "  * 

The  Shaksperian  tradition  is  unbroken  in  the  his- 
tory of  English  literature  and  of  the  English  theater. 
His  plays,  in  one  form  or  another,  have  always  kept 
the  stage  even  in  the  most  degenerate  condition  of 
public   taste,  f     Few   handsomer   tributes    have    been 

*  "  Epistle  to  Augustus." 

f  The  tradition  as  to  Chaucer,  Spenser,  and  Milton  is  almost 
equally  continuous.  A  course  of  what  Lowell  calls  "penitential 
reading,"  in  Restoration  criticism,  will  convince  anyone  that  these 
four  names  already  stood  out  distinctly,  as  those  of  the  four  greatest 
English  poets.  See  especially  Winstanley,  "  Lives  of  the  English 
Poets,"  1687  ;  Langbaine,  "  An  Account  of  the  English  Dramatic 
Poets,"  1691  ;  Dennis,  "  Essay  on  the  Genius  and  Writings  of 
Shakspere,"  1712  ;  Gildon,  "The  Complete  Art  of  Poetry,"  1718. 
The  fact  mentioned  by  Macaulay,  that  Sir  Wm.  Temple's  "  Essay 
on  Ancient  and  Modern  Learning  "  names  none  of  the  four,  is  with- 
out importance.     Temple   refers    by   name   to   only   three  English 

wits,"  Sidney,  Bacon,  and  Selden.  This  very  superficial  perform- 
ance of  Temple's  was  a  contribution  to  the  futile  controversy  over  the 


70  <iA  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

paid  to  Shakspere's  genius  than  were  paid  in  prose 
and  verse,  by  the  critics  of  our  classical  age,  from 
Dryden  to  Johnson.  "To  begin  then  with  Shaks- 
pere,"  says  the  former,  in  his  "Essay  of  Dramatic 
Poesy,"  "  he  was  the  man  who,  of  all  modern  and  per- 
haps ancient  poets,  had  the  largest  and  most  compre- 
hensive soul."  And,  in  the  prologue  to  his  adaptation 
of  "The  Tempest,"  he  acknowledges  that 

"  Shakspere's  magic  could  not  copied  be  : 
Within  that  circle  none  durst  walk  but  he." 

"The  poet  of  whose  works  I  have  undertaken  the 
revision,"  writes  Dr.  Johnson,  "may  now  begin  to 
assume  the  dignity  of  an  ancient,  and  claim  the 
privilege  of  established  fame  and  prescriptive  venera- 
tion." * 

"  Each  change  of  many-colored  life  he  drew, 
Exhausted  worlds,  and  then  imagined  new."  f 

Yet  Dryden  made  many  petulant,  and  Johnson 
many  fatuous  mistakes  about  Shakspere;  while  such 
minor  criticasters  as  Thomas  Rymer  \  and  Mrs. 
Charlotte  Lenox  §  uttered  inanities  of  blasphemy  about 
the  finest  touches  in  "  Macbeth  "  and  "  Othello."  For 
if   we  look  closer,  we  notice  that  everyone  who  bore 

relative  merits  of  the  ancients  and  moderns,  which  is  now  only  of 
interest  as  having  given  occasion  to  Bentley  to  display  his  great 
scholarship  in  his  "Dissertation  on  the  Epistles  of  Phalaris,"  (1698), 
and  to  Swift  to  show  his  powers  of  irony  in  "  The  Battle  of  the 
Books  "  (1704). 

*  Preface  to  the  "  Plays  of  Shakspere,"  1765. 

f  Prologue,  spoken  by  Garrick  at  the  opening  of  Drury  Lane 
Theater,  1747. 

:j:"  The  Tragedies  of  the  Last  Age  Considered  and  Examined,"  1678. 

§  "  Shakspere  Illustrated,"  1753. 


The  Spenserians.  71 

witness  to  Shakspere's  greatness  qualified  his  praise 
by  an  emphatic  disapproval  of  his  methods.  He  was  a 
prodigious  genius,  but  a  most  defective  artist.  He  was 
the  supremest  of  dramatic  poets,  but  he  did  not  know 
his  business.  It  did  not  apparently  occur  to  anyone 
— except,  in  some  degree,  to  Johnson — that  there  was 
an  absurdity  in  this  contradiction;  and  that  the  real 
fault  was  not  in  Shakspere,  but  in  the  standards  by 
which  he  was  tried.  Here  are  the  tests  which  techni- 
cal criticism  has  always  been  seeking  to  impose,  and 
they  are  not  confined  to  the  classical  period  only. 
They  are  used  by  Sidney,  who  took  the  measure  of  the 
English  buskin  before  Shakspere  had  begun  to  write; 
by  Jonson,  who  measured  socks  with  him  in  his  own 
day ;  by  Matthew  Arnold,  who  wanted  an  English  Acad- 
emy, but  in  whom  the  academic  vaccine,  after  so  long  a 
transmission,  worked  but  mildly.  Shakspere  violated 
the  unities;  his  plays  were  neither  right  comedies  nor 
right  tragedies;  he  had  small  Latin  and  less  Greek; 
he  wanted  art  and  sometimes  sense,  committing  anach- 
ronisms and  Bohemian  shipwrecks;  wrote  hastily, 
did  not  blot  enough,  and  failed  of  the  grand  style.  He 
was  "untaught,  unpractised  in  a  barbarous  age";  a 
wild,  irregular  child  of  nature,  ignorant  of  the  rules, 
unacquainted  with  ancient  models,  succeeding — when 
he  did  succeed — by  happy  accident  and  the  sheer  force 
of  genius;  his  plays  were  "  roughdrawn,"  his  plots 
lame,  his  speeches  bombastic;  he  was  guilty  on  every 
page  of  "some  solecism  or  some  notorious  flaw  in 
sense."  * 

Langbaine,  to  be  sure,  defends  him  against  Dryden's 

*See  Dryden's  "  Grounds  of  Criticism  in  Tragedy  "  and  "  Defence 
of  the  Epilogue  to  the  Conquest  of  Granada." 


72  <tA  History  of  English  'T^omanticism. 

censure.  But  Dennis  regrets  his  ignorance  of  poetic 
art  and  the  disadvantages  under  which  he  lay  from  not 
being  conversant  with  the  ancients.  If  he  had  known 
his  Sallust,  he  would  have  drawn  a  juster  picture  of 
Caesar;  and  if  he  had  read  Horace  "Ad  Pisones,"  he 
would  have  made  a  better  Achilles.  He  complains 
that  he  makes  the  good  and  the  bad  perish  promiscu- 
ously; and  that  in  "  Coriolanus " — a  play  which 
Dennis  "improved  "  for  the  new  stage — he  represents 
Menenius  as  a  buffoon  and  introduces  the  rabble  in  a 
most  undignified  fashion.*  Gildon,  again,  says  that 
Shakspere  must  have  read  Sidney's  "Defence  of 
Poesy"  and  therefore,  ought  to  have  known  the  rules 
and  that  his  neglect  of  them  was  owing  to  laziness. 
"  Money  seems  to  have  been  his  aim  more  than  reputa- 
tion, and  therefore  he  was  always  in  a  hurry  .  .  . 
and  he  thought  it  time  thrown  away,  to  study  regu- 
larity and  order,  when  any  confused  stuff  that  came 
into  his  head  would  do  his  business  and  fill  his  house. "  f 
It  would  be  easy,  but  it  would  be  tedious,  to 
multiply  proofs  of  this  patronizing  attitude  toward 
Shakspere.  Perhaps  Pope  voices  the  general  senti- 
ment of  his  school,  as  fairly  as  anyone,  in  the 
last  words  of  his  preface. J  "I  will  conclude 
by  saying  of  Shakspere  that,  with  all  his  faults 
and  with   all  the  irregularity  of  his  drama,  one   may 

*  "Essay  on  the  Genius  and  Writings  of  Shakspere,"  1712. 
f  "The  Art  of  Poetry,"  pp.  63  and  99.     C/.  Pope,   "  Epistle   to 
Augustus  "  : 

' '  Shakspere  (whom  you  and  every  play-house  bill 
Style  the  divine,  the  matchless,  what  you  will) 
For  gain,  not  glory,  winged  his  roving  flight, 
And  grew  immortal  in  his  own  despite." 
J  Pope's  "Shakspere,"  1725. 


The  Spenserians.  73 

look    upon    his    works,    in  comparison    of   those  that 
are   more   finished  and    regular,  as  upon  an   ancient, 
majestic  piece  of  Gothic  architecture  compared  with  a 
neat,  modern  building.     The  latter  is  more   elegant 
and    glaring,   but    the    former    is    more    strong  and 
solemn.    .    .    It   has   much    the   greater   variety,    and 
much  the  nobler  apartments,  though  we  are  often  con- 
ducted to  them  by   dark,  odd  and  uncouth   passages. 
Nor  does  the  whole  fail  to  strike  us  with  greater  rev- 
erence,  though   many   of  the  parts    are   childish,  ill- 
placed   and   unequal  to  its  grandeur."     This  view  of 
Shakspere  continued  to  be  the  rule  until  Coleridge  and 
Schlegel  taught  the  new   century  that  this    child   of 
fancy  was,  in  reality,  a  profound  and  subtle  artist,  but 
that  the  principles  of  his  art — as  is  always  the  case  with 
creative  genius  working  freely  and  instinctively — were 
learned  by  practice,  in   the  concrete,  instead  of  being 
consciously  thrown  out  by  the  workman  himself  into 
an    abstract    theoriaj    so    that    they  have  to  be   dis- 
covered by  a  reverent  study  of  his  work  and  lie  deeper 
than  the  rules  of  French  criticism.     Schlegel,  whose 
lectures  on  dramatic  art  were  translated  into  English 
in    1815,    speaks    with    indignation    of    the    current 
English     misunderstanding     of     Shakspere.      "That 
foreigners,    and   Frenchmen    in    particular,    who    fre- 
quently speak  in  the  strangest  language  about  antiq- 
uity and  the  Middle  Age,  as  if  cannibalism  had  been 
first  put  an  end   to  in  Europe  by  Louis  XIV.,  should 
entertain  this  opinion  of  Shakspere  might  be  pardon- 
able.    But  that  Englishmen  should  adopt   such  a  ca- 
lumniation   .    .    .    is  to  me  incomprehensible."* 

*  For  a  fuller  discussion  of  this   subject,  consult   "A  History  of 
Opinion  on  the  Writings  of  Shakspere,"  in  the  supplemental  volume 


74  -v^  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

The  beginnings  of  the  romantic  movement  in  Eng- 
land were  uncertain.  There  was  a  vague  dissent 
from  current  literary  estimates,  a  vague  discontent 
with  reigning  literary  modes,  especially  with  the 
merely  intellectual    poetry  then  in    vogue,  which  did 

of  Knight's  Pictorial  Edition.  Editions  of  Shakspere  issued  within 
the  century  following  the  Restoration  were  the  third  Folio,  1664  ;  the 
fourth  Folio,  1685;  Rowe's  (the  first  critical  edition,  with  a  Life,  etc.) 
1709  (second  edition,  1714)  ;  Pope's,  1725  (second  edition,  1728); 
Theobald's,  1733  ',  Hanmer's  1744  ;  Warburton- Pope's,  1747  ;  and 
Johnson's,  1765.  Meanwhile,  though  Shakspere 's  plays  continued  to 
be  acted,  it  was  mostly  in  doctored  versions.  Tate  changed  "  Lear" 
to  a  comedy.  Davenant  and  Dryden  made  over  "  The  Tempest "  into 
"The  Enchanted  Island,"  turning  blank  verse  into  rhyme  and  intro- 
ducing new  characters,  while  Shad  well  altered  it  into  an  opera. 
Dryden  rewrote  "  Troilus  and  Cressida";  Davenant,  "Macbeth." 
Davenant  patched  together  a  thing  which  he  called  "  The 
Law  against  Lovers,"  from  "Measure  for  Measure"  and  "Much 
Ado  about  Nothing."  Dennis  remodeled  the  "Merry  Wives 
of  Windsor"  as  "  The  Comical  Gallant";  Tate,  "Richard  IL" 
as  "The  Sicilian  Usurper";  and  Otway,  "  Romeo  and  Juliet," 
as  "  Caius  Marius."  Lord  Lansdowne  converted  "  The  Merchant 
of  Venice"  into  "The  Jew  of  Venice,"  wherein  Shylock 
was  played  as  a  comic  character  down  to  the  time  of  Mack- 
lin  and  Kean.  Durfey  tinkered  "Cymbeline."  Gibber  meta- 
morphosed "  King  John  "  into  "  Papal  Tyranny,"  and  his  version 
was  acted  till  Macready's  time.  Gibber's  stage  version  of  "  Rich- 
ard IIL"  is  played  still.  Cumberland  "engrafted"  new  features 
upon  "  Timon  of  Athens  "  for  Garrick's  theater,  about  1775.  In  his 
life  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  Campbell  says  that  "  Goriolanus  "  "  was  never 
acted  genuinely  from  the  year  1660  till  the  year  1820  "  (Phillimore's 
"  Life  of  Lyttelton,"  Vol.  I.  p.  315).  He  mentions  a  revision  by 
Tate,  another  by  Dennis  ("  The  Invader  of  his  Country"),  and  a  third 
brought  out  by  the  elder  Sheridan  in  1764,  atCovent  Garden,  and  put 
together  from  Shakspere's  tragedy  and  an  independent  play  of  the 
same  name  by  Thomson.  "  Then  in  1789  came  the  Kemble  edition 
in  which  .    .    .    much  of  Thomson's  absurdity  is  still  preserved." 


II 


The  Spenserians.  75 

not  feed  the  soul.  But  there  was,  at  first,  no  con- 
scious, concerted  effort  toward  something  better; 
still  less  was  there  any  sudden  outburst  of  creative 
activity.  The  new  group  of  poets,  partly  contem- 
poraries of  Pope,  partly  successors  to  him — Thomson,  /  ^' 
Shenstone,  Dyer,  Akenside,  Gray,  Collins,  and  the  .  ^ 
AVarton  brothers — found  their  point  of  departure 
ifi  the  loving  study  and  revival  of  old  authors. 
From  what  has  been  said  of  the  survival  of  Shaks- 
pere's  influence  it  might  be  expected  that  his  would 
have  been  the  name  paramount  among  the  pioneers  of 
English  romanticism.  There  are  several  reasons  why 
this  was  not  the  case. 

In  the  first  place,  the  genius  of  the  new  poets  was 
lyrical  or  descriptive,  rather  than  dramatic.  The 
divorce  between  literature  and  the  stage  had  not  yet, 
indeed,  become  total;  and,  in  obedience  to  the  ex- 
pectation that  every  man  of  letters  should  try  his 
hand  at  play-writing,  Thomson,  at  least,  as  well  as  his 
friend  and  disciple  Mallet,  composed  a  number  of 
dramas.  But  these  were  little  better  than  failures 
even  at  the  time;  and  while  ''The  Seasons"  has 
outlived  all  changes  of  taste,  and  "The  Castle  of 
Indolence"  has  never  wanted  admirers,  tragedies  like 
"Agamemnon"  and  "  Sophonisba  "  have  been  long 
forgotten.  An  imitation  of  Shakspere  to  any  effect- 
ive purpose  must  obviously  have  taken  the  shape  of 
a  play;  and  neither  Gray  nor  Collins  nor  Akenside, 
nor  any  of  the  group,  was  capable  of  a  play.  Inspira- 
tion of  a  kind,  these  early  romanticists  did  draw  from 
Shakspere.  Verbal  reminiscences  of  him  abound  in  W 
Gray.  Collins  was  a  diligent  student  of  his  works. 
His  "  Dirge  in  Cymbeline  "  is  an  exquisite  variation 


76  cA  History  of  English  l^pmanlicism. 

on  a  Shaksperian  theme.  In  the  delirium  of  his  last 
sickness,  he  told  Warton  that  he  had  found  in  an 
Italian  novel  the  long-sought  original  of  the  plot  of 
"The  Tempest."  It  is  noteworthy,  by  the  way,  that 
the  romanticists  were  attracted  to  the  poetic,  as 
distinguished  from  the  dramatic,  aspect  of  Shaks- 
pere's  genius;  to  those  of  his  plays  in  which  fairy  lore 
and  supernatural  machinery  occur,  such  as  "The 
Tempest"  and  "A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream," 

Again,  the  stage  has  a  history  of  its  own,  and,  in 
so  far  as  it  was  now  making  progress  of  any  kind,  it 
was  not  in  the  direction  of  a  more  poetic  or  romantic 
drama,  but  rather  toward  prose  tragedy  and  the  senti- 
mental comedy  of  domestic  life,  what  the  French  call 
/a  frag/die  bourgeoise  and  la  comedie  larmoyante.  In 
truth  the  theater  was  now  dying;  and,  though,  in  the 
comedies  of  Goldsmith  and  Sheridan,  it  sent  up  one 
bright,  expiring  gleam,  the  really  dramatic  talent  of 
the  century  had  already  sought  other  channels  in  the 
novels  of  Richardson,  Fielding,  and  Smollett. 

After  all,  a  good  enough  reason  why  the  romantic 
movement  did  not  begin  with  imitation  of  Shakspere 
is  the  fact  that  Shakspere  is  inimitable.  He  has  no 
one  manner  that  can  be  caught,  but  a  hundred 
manners;  is  not  the  poet  of  romance,  but  of  human- 
ity; nor  mediaeval,  but  perpetually  modern  and  con- 
temporaneous in  his  universality.  The  very  familiar- 
ity of  his  plays,  and  their  continuous  performance, 
although  in  mangled  forms,  was  a  reason  why  they 
could  take  little  part  in  a  literary  revival;  for  what 
has  never  been  forgotten  cannot  be  revived.  To 
Germany  and  France,  at  a  later  date,  Shakspere 
came  with  the  shock  of  a  discovery  and  begot  Schiller 


7he  Spenserians.  77 

and  Victor  Hugo.  In  the  England  of  the  eighteenth 
century  he  begot  only  Ireland's  forgeries. 

The  name  inscribed  in  large  letters  on  the  standard 
of  the  new  school  was  not  Shakspere  but  Spenser.  If 
there  is  any  poet  who  is  par  excellence  the  poet  of 
romance,  whose  art  is  the  antithesis  of  Pope's,  it  is 
the  poet  of  the  "  Faerie  Queene."  To  ears  that  had 
heard  from  childhood  the  tinkle  of  the  couplet,  with  its 
monotonously  recurring  rhyme,  its  inevitable  caesura, 
its  narrow  imprisonment  of  the  sense,  it  must  have 
been  a  relief  to  turn  to  the  amplitude  of  Spenser's 
stanza,  "  the  full  strong  sail  of  his  great  verse."  To 
a  generation  surfeited  with  Pope's  rhetorical  devices 
— antithesis,  climax,  anticlimax — and  fatigued  with  the 
unrelaxing  brilliancy  and  compression  of  his  language; 
the  escape  from  epigram  and  point  (snap  after  snap, 
like  a  pack  of  fire-crackers),  from  a  style  which  has  made 
his  every  other  line  a  proverb  or  current  quotation — 
the  escape  from  all  this  into  Spenser's  serene,  leisurely 
manner,  copious  Homeric  similes,  and  lingering  detail 
must  have  seemed  most  restful.  To  go  from  Pope  to 
Spenser  was  to  exchange  platitudes,  packed  away 
with  great  verbal  cunning  in  neat  formulas  readily 
portable  by  the  memory,  for  a  wealth  of  concrete 
images:  to  exchange  saws  like, 

"  A  little  learning  is  a  dangerous  thing," 

for  a  succession  of  richly  colored  pictures  by  the 
greatest  painter  among  English  poets.  It  was  to 
exchange  the  most  prosaic  of  our  poets — a  poet  about 
whom  question  has  arisen  whether  he  is  a  poet  at  all 
— for  the  most  purely  poetic  of  our  poets,  "  the  poet's 
poet."     And  finally,  it  was  to  exchange  the  world  of 


78  iA  History  of  English  'T^pmanticism. 

everyday  manners  and  artificial  society  for  an  imagi- 
nary kingdom  of  enchantment,  "out  of  space,  out  of 
time." 

English  poetry  has  oscillated  between  the  poles  of 
Spenser  and  Pope.  The  poets  who  have  been  ac- 
cepted by  the  race  as  most  truly  national,  poets  like 
Shakspere,  Milton,  and  Byron,  have  stood  midway. 
Neither  Spenser  nor  Pope  satisfies  long.  We  weary, 
in  time,  of  the  absence  of  passion  and  intensity  in 
Spenser,  his  lack  of  dramatic  power,  the  want  of 
actuality  in  his  picture  of  life,  the  want  of  brief 
energy  and  nerve  in  his  style;  just  as  we  weary  of 
Pope's  inadequate  sense  of  beauty.  But  at  a  time 
when  English  poetry  had  abandoned  its  true  function — 
the  refreshment  and  elevation  of  the  soul  through  the 
imagination — Spenser's  poetry,  the  poetry  of  ideal 
beauty,  formed  the  most  natural  corrective.  What- 
ever its  deficiencies,  it  was  not,  at  any  rate,  "con- 
ceived and  composed  in  his  wits." 

Spenser  had  not  fared  so  well  as  Shakspere  under 
the  change  which  came  over  public  taste  after  the 
Restoration.  The  age  of  Elizabeth  had  no  literary 
reviews  or  book  notices,  and  its  critical  remains  are  of 
the  scantiest.  But  the  complimentary  verses  by  many 
hands  published  with  the  "  Faerie  Queene  "  and  the 
numerous  references  to  Spenser  in  the  whole  poetic 
literature  of  the  time,  leave  no  doubt  as  to  the 
fact  that  his  contemporaries  accorded  him  the  fore- 
most place  among  English  poets.  The  tradition  of 
his  supremacy  lasted  certainly  to  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  if  not  beyond.  His  influence  is 
visible  not  only  in  the  work  of  professed  disciples  like 
Giles  and  Phineas  Fletcher,  the  pastoral  poet  William 


The  Spenserians.  79 

Browne,  and  Henry  More,  the  Cambridge  Platonist, 
but  in  the  verse  of  Jonson,  Fletcher,  Milton,  and 
many  others.  Milton  confessed  to  Dryden  that  Spen- 
ser was  his  "poetical  father."  Dryden  himself  and 
Cowley,  whose  practice  is  so  remote  from  Spenser's, 
acknowledged  their  debt  to  him.  The  passage  from 
Cowley's  essay  "On  Myself"  is  familiar:  "I  remem- 
ber when  I  began  to  read,  and  to  take  some  pleasure 
in  it,  there  was  wont  to  lie  in  my  mother's  parlour  (I 
know  not  by  what  accident,  for  she  herself  never  read 
any  book  but  of  devotion — but  there  was  wont  to  lie) 
Spenser's  works.  This  I  happened  to  fall  upon,  and 
was  infinitely  delighted  with  the  stories  of  the  knights 
and  giants  and  monsters  and  brave  houses  which  I 
found  everywhere  there  (though  my  understanding 
had  little  to  do  with  all  this),  and,  by  degrees,  with 
the  tinkling  of  the  rime  and  dance  of  the  numbers;  so 
that  I  think  I  had  read  him  all  over  before  I  was  twelve 
years  old,  and  was  thus  made  a  poet  as  irremediably 
as  a  child  is  made  an  eunuch."  It  is  a  commonplace 
that  Spenser  has  made  more  poets  than  any  other  one 
writer.  Even  Pope,  whose  empire  he  came  back  from 
Fairyland  to  overthrow,  assured  Spence  that  he  had 
read  the  "  Faerie  Queene  "  with  delight  when  he  was 
a  boy,  and  re-read  it  with  equal  pleasure  in  his  last 
years.  Indeed,  it  is  too  readily  assumed  that  writers 
are  insensible  to  the  beauties  of  an  opposite  school. 
Pope  was  quite  incapable  of  making  romantic  poetry, 
but  not,  therefore,  incapable  of  appreciating  it.  He 
took  a  great  liking  to  Allan  Ramsay's  "  Gentle  Shep- 
herd"; he  admired  "The  Seasons,"  and  did  Thomson 
the  honor  to  insert  a  few  lines  of  his  own  in  "  Sum- 
mer,"    Among  his  youthful  parodies  of  old   English 


8o  t/^  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

poets  is  one  piece  entitled  "The  Alley,"  a  not  over 
clever  burlesque  of  the  famous  description  of  the 
Bower  of  Bliss.* 

As  for  Dryden,  his  reverence  for  Spenser  is  quali- 
fied by  the  same  sort  of  critical  disapprobation  which 
we  noticed  in  his  eulogies  of  Shakspere.  He  says 
that  the  "  Faerie  Queene  "  has  no  uniformity:  the  lan- 
guage is  not  so  obsolete  as  is  commonly  supposed,  and 
is  intelligible  after  some  practice;  but  the  choice  of 
stanza  is  unfortunate,  though  in  spite  of  it,  Spenser's 
verse  is  more  melodious  than  any  other  English  poet's 
except  Mr.  Waller's,  f  Ambrose  Philips  — Namby 
Pamby  Philips — whom  Thackeray  calls  "a  dreary 
idyllic  cockney,"  appealed  to  "The  Shepherd's  Calen- 
dar" as  his  model,  in  the  introduction  to  his  insipid 
"Pastorals,"  1709.  Steele,  in  No.  540  of  the  Spec- 
tator (November  19,  1712),  printed  some  mildly  com- 
mendatory remarks  about  Spenser.  Altogether  it  is 
clear  that  Spenser's  greatness  was  accepted,  rather 
upon  trust,  throughout  the  classical  period,  but  that 
this  belief  was  coupled  with  a  general  indifference  to 
his  writings.  Addison's  lines  in  his  "Epistle  to 
Sacheverel;  An  Account  of  the  Greatest  English 
Poets,"  1694,  probably  represent  accurately  enough 
the  opinion  of  the  majority  of  readers: 

"  Old  Spenser  next,  warmed  with  poetic  rage. 
In  ancient  tales  amused  a  barbarous  age; 
An  age  that,  yet  uncultivate  and  rude, 
Where'er  the  poet's  fancy  led,  pursued, 
Through  pathless  fields  and  unfrequented  floods. 
To  dens  of  dragons  and  enchanted  woods. 

*"  Faerie  Queene,"  II.  xii.  71. 

f  "  Essay  on  Satire."     Philips  says  a  good  word  for  the  Spenserian 
stanza:  "  How  much  more  stately  and  majestic  in  epic  poems,  espe- 


The  Spenserians.  8i 

But  now  the  mystic  tale,  that  pleased  of  yore, 
Can  charm  an  understanding  age  no  more. 
The  long-spun  allegories  fulsome  grow. 
While  the  dull  moral  lies  too  plain  below. 
We  view  well  pleased  at  distance  all  the  sights 
Of  arms  and  palfreys,  battles,  fields  and  fights. 
And  damsels  in  distress  and  courteous  knights, 
But  when  we  look  too  near,  the  shades  decay 
And  all  the  pleasing  landscape  fades  away." 

Addison  acknowledged  to  Spence  that,  when  he 
wrote  this  passage,  he  had  never  read  Spenser!  As 
late  as  1754  Thomas  Warton  speaks  of  him  as  "  this 
admired  but  neglected  poet,"  *  and  Mr.  Kitchin  asserts 
that  "between  1650  and  1750  there  are  but  few  no- 
tices of  him,  and  very  few  editions  of  his  works."  f 
There  was  a  reprint  of  Spenser's  works — being  the 
third  folio  of  the  "Faerie  Queene  " — in  1679,  but  no 
critical  edition  till  1715.  Meanwhile  the  title  of  a 
book  issued  in  1687  shows  that  Spenser  did  not  escape 
that  process  of  "improvement"  which  we  have  seen 
applied  to  Shakspere:  "Spenser  Redivivus;  contain- 
ing the  First  Book  of  the  'Faery  Queene.'  His  Es- 
sential Design  Preserved,  but  his  Obsolete  Language 
and  Manner  of  Verse  totally  laid  aside.  Delivered 
in  Heroic  Numbers  by  a  Person  of  Quality."  The 
preface  praises  Spenser,  but  declares  that  "his  style 
seems  no  less  unintelligible  at  this  day  than  the  obso- 

cially  of  heroic  argument,  Spenser's  stanza  ...  is  above  the  way 
either  of  couplet  or  alternation  of  four  verses  only,  I  am  persuaded, 
were  it  revived,  would  soon  be  acknowledged." — Theatrum  Poetata- 
rum.  Preface,  pp.  3-4. 

*"  Observations  on  the  Faery  Queene,"  Vol.  II.  p.  317. 

f "  The  Faery  Queene,"  Book  I.,  Oxford,  1869.  Introduction, 
p.  XX. 


82  iA  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

latest  of  our  English  or  Saxon  dialect."     One  instance 
of  this  deliverance  into  heroic  numbers  must  suffice: 

"  By  this  the  northern  wagoner  had  set 
His  sevenfold  team  behind  the  steadfast  star 
That  was  in  ocean  waves  yet  never  wet, 
But  firm  is  fixed,  and  sendeth  light  from  far 
To  all  that  in  the  wide  deep  wandering  are." 

— Spenser* 

In  17 15  John  Hughes  published  his  edition  of 
Spenser's  works  in  six  volumes.  This  was  the  first 
attempt  at  a  critical  text  of  the  poet,  and  was  accom- 
panied with  a  biography,  a  glossary,  an  essay  on  alle- 
gorical poetry,  and  some  remarks  on  the  "  Faerie 
Queene."  It  is  curious  to  find  in  the  engravings,  from 
designs  by  Du  Guernier,  which  illustrate  Hughes' 
volumes,  that  Spenser's  knights  wore  the  helmets  and 
body  armor  of  the  Roman  legionaries,  over  which  is 
occasionally  thrown  something  that  looks  very  much  | 
like  a  toga.  The  lists  in  which  they  run  a  tilt  have  the 
facade  of  a  Greek  temple  for  a  background.  The 
house  of  Busyrane  is  Louis  Quatorze  architecture,  and 
Amoret  is  chained  to  a  renaissance  column  with 
Corinthian  capital  and  classical  draperies.  Hughes' 
glossary  of  obsolete  terms  includes  words  which  are  in 
daily  use  by  modern  writers:  aghast,  baleful,  behest, 
bootless,  carol,  craven,  dreary,  forlorn,  foray,  guer- 
don, plight,  welkin,  yore.  If  words  like  these,  and 
like  many  which  Warton  annotates  in  his  "  Observa- 
tions,"   really   needed    explanation,    it    is   a   striking 

*"  Canto  "ii.  stanza  i. 

' '  Now  had  Bootes'  team  far  passed  behind 
The  northern  star,  when  hours  of  night  declined." 

— Person  of  Quality. 


7he  Spenserians.  83 

proof,  not  only  of  the  degree  in  which  our  older  poets 
had  been  forgotten,  but  also  of  the  poverty  to  which 
the  vocabulary  of  English  poetry  had  been  reduced  by 
1700. 

In  his  prefatory  remarks  to  the  "  Faerie  Queene,"  the 
editor  expresses  the  customary  regrets  that  the  poet 
should  have  chosen  so  defective  a  stanza, "  so  romantick 
a  story,"  and  a  model,  or  framework  for  the  whole, 
which  appears  so  monstrous  when  "examined  by  the 
rules  of  epick  poetry";  makes  the  hackneyed  compari- 
son between  Spenser's  work  and  Gothic  architecture, 
and  apologizes  for  his  author,  on  the  ground  that,  at 
the  time  when  he  wrote,  "the  remains  of  the  old 
Gothick  chivalry  were  not  quite  abolished."  "  He  did 
not  much  revive  the  curiosity  of  the  public,"  says 
Johnson,  in  his  life  of  Hughes;  "for  near  thirty  years 
elapsed  before  his  edition  was  reprinted."  Editions 
of  the  "Faerie  Queene"  came  thick  and  fast  about  the 
middle  of  the  century.  One  (by  Birch)  was  issued  in 
1751,  and  three  in  1758;  including  the  important 
edition  by  Upton,  who,  of  all  Spenser's  commentators, 
has  entered  most  elaborately  into  the  interpretation  of 
the  allegory. 

In  the  interval  had  appeared,  in  gradually  increas- 
ing numbers,  that  series  of  Spenserian  imitations 
which  forms  an  interesting  department  of  eighteenth- 
century  verse.  The  series  was  begun  by  a  most 
unlikely  person,  Matthew  Prior,  whose  "  Ode  to  the 
Queen,"  1706,  was  in  a  ten-lined  modification  of  Spen- 
ser's stanza  and  employed  a  few  archaisms  like  weet 
and  ween,  but  was  very  unspenserian  in  manner.  As 
early  as  the  second  decade  of  the  century,  the  horns 
of  Elfland  may  be  heard  faintly  blowing  in  the  poems 


84  «^  History  of  English  %omanticistn. 

of  the  Rev.  Samuel  Croxall,  the  translator  of  ^Esop's 
*'  Fables."  Mr.  Gosse  *  quotes  Croxall's  own  description 
of  his  poetry,  as  designed  "to  set  off  the  dry  and  insipid 
stuff "  of  the  age  with  "  a  whole  piece  of  rich  and  glow- 
ingscarlet."  His  two  pieces  '*  The  Vision,"  1715,  and 
"The  Fair  Circassian,"  1720,  though  written  in  the 
couplet,  exhibit  a  rosiness  of  color  and  a  luxuriance  of 
imagery  manifestly  learned  from  Spenser.  In  17 13  he 
had  published,  under  the  pseudonym  of  Nestor  Iron- 
side, "An  Original  Canto  of  Spenser,"  and  in  1714 
"Another  Original  Canto,"  both,  of  course,  in  the 
stanza  of  the  "Faerie  Queene."  The  example  thus  set 
was  followed  before  the  end  of  the  century  by  scores  of 
poets,  including  many  well-known  names,  like  Aken- 
side,  Thomson,  Shenstone,  and  Thomas  Warton,  as  well 
as  many  second-rate  and  third-rate  versifiers,  f 

*"  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,"  p.  139. 

f  For  a  full  discussion  of  this  subject  the  reader  should  consult 
Phelps'  "  Beginnings  of  the  English  Romantic  Movement,"  chap, 
iv.,  "The  Spenserian  Revival."  A  partial  list  of  Spenserian 
imitations  is  given  in  Todd's  edition  of  Spenser,  Vol.  I.  But  the  list 
in  Prof.  Phelps'  Appendix,  if  not  exhaustive,  is  certainly  the  most 
complete  yet  published  and  may  be  here  reproduced.  1706  :  Prior  : 
"Ode  to  the  Queen."  1713-21  :  Prior  (?):  "  Colin's  Mistakes." 
1713  :  Croxall:  "An  Original  Canto  of  Spenser."  1714  :  Croxall: 
"  Another  Original  Canto."  1730  (circa)  :  Whitehead  :  "  Vision  of 
Solomon,"  "Ode  to  the  Honorable  Charles  Townsend,"  "Ode 
to  the  Same."  1736  :  Thompson  :  "  Epithalamium."  1736  : 
Cambridge:  "Marriage  of  Frederick."  1736-37:  Boyse  :  "The 
Olive,"  "  Psalm  XLII."  1737  :  Akenside  :  "  The  Virtuoso."  1739: 
West:  "Abuse  of  Traveling."  1739:  Anon.:  "A  New  Canto  of 
Spenser's  Fairy  Queen."  1740  :  Boyse  :  "  Ode  to  the  Marquis  of 
Tavistock."  1741  {circa):  Boyse:  "Vision  of  Patience."  1742: 
Shenstone:  "The  Schoolmistress."  1742-50:  Cambridge: 
^' Archimage."      1742:    Dodsley  :     "Pain   and    Patience."      1743: 


The  Spenserians.  85 

It  is  noteworthy  that  many,  if  not  most,  of  the  imita- 
tions were  at  first  undertaken  in  a  spirit  of  burlesque; 
as  is  plain  not  only  from  the  poems  themselves,  but 
from  the  correspondence  of  Shenstone  and  others.* 
The  antiquated  speech  of  an  old  author  is  in  itself  a 
challenge  to  the  parodist:  teste  our  modern  ballad  imi- 
tations.  There  is  something  ludicrous  about  the  very 
look  of  antique  spelling,  and  in  the  sound  of  words  like 
eftsoones  a.vid  perdy;  while  the  sign.  Ye  Olde  Booke  Store, 
in  Old  English  text  over  a  bookseller's  door,  strikes 
the  public  invariably  as  a  most  merry  conceited  jest; 
especially  if   the  first   letter  be  pronounced  as   a  y, 

Anon.:  "Albion's  Triumph."  1744  {circa):  Dodsley  :  "Death  of 
Mr.  Pope."  1744:  Akenside  :  "  Ode  to  Curio."  1746:  Blacklock: 
"  Hymn  to  Divine  Love,"  "  Philantheus."  1747  :  Mason  ;  Stanzas 
in  "  Musaeus."  1747  :  Ridley  :  "  Psyche."  1747  :  Lowth  :  "  Choice 
of  Hercules."  1747:  Upton:  "A  New  Canto  of  Spenser's  Fairy 
Queen."  1747  :  Bedingfield  :  "  Education  of  Achilles."  1747  : 
,Pitt:  "The  Jordan."  1748:  T.  Warton,  Sr.:  "Philander." 
ij748  :  Thomson:  "The  Castle  of  Indolence."  1749:  Potter: 
"  A  Farewell  Hymn  to  the  Country."  1750  :  T.  Warton  :  "  Morn- 
ing." 1751  :  West:  "Education."  1751  :  T.  Warton  :  "  Elegy  on 
the  Death  of  Prince  Frederick."  1751  :  Mendez  :  "  The  Seasons." 
1751  :  Lloyd:  "Progress  of  Envy."  1751  :  Akenside:  "Ode." 
1751  :  Smith:  "Thales."  1753:  T.  Warton:  "A  Pastoral  in  the 
Manner  of  Spenser."  1754:  Denton:  "Immortality."  1755: 
Arnold:  "The  Mirror."  174S-5S  :  Mendez:  "  Squire  of  Dames." 
1756:  Smart:  "  Hymn  to  the  Supreme  Being."  1757:  Thompson: 
"  The  Nativity,"  "  Hymn  to  May."  1758  :  Akenside  :  "  To  Country 
Gentlemen  of  England."  1759:  Wilkie  :  "A  Dream."  1759:  Poem 
in  "  Ralph's  Miscellany."  1762  :  Denton  :  "  House  of  Superstition.'' 
1767:  Mickle  :  "The  Concubine."  176S  :  Downman  :  "Land  of 
the  Muses."  1771-74:  Beattie  :  "The  Ministrel."  1775:  Anon.: 
"Land  of  Liberty."  1775:  Mickle:  Stanzas  from  "Introduction 
to  the  Lusiad."  "  ■""^^^ 

*  See  Phelps,  pp.  66-68. 


86  zA  History  of  English  l^omanficism. 

instead  of,  what  it  really  is,  a  mere  abbreviation  of  fk. 
But  in  order  that  this  may  be  so,  the  language 
travestied  should  not  be  too  old.  There  would  be 
nothing  amusing,  for  example,  in  a  burlesque  imitation 
of  Beowulf,  because  the  Anglo-Saxon  of  the  original 
is  utterly  strange  to  the  modern  reader.  It  is  conceiv- 
able that  quick-witted  Athenians  of  the  time  of  Aris- 
tophanes might  find  something  quaint  in  Homer's  Ionic 
dialect,  akin  to  that  quaintness  which  we  find  in 
Chaucer;  but  a  Grecian  of  to-day  would  need  to  be  very 
Attic  indeed,  to  detect  any  provocation  to  mirth  in 
the  use  of  the  genitive  in-oto,  in  place  of  the  genitive 
in-ov.  Again,  as  one  becomes  familiar  with  an  old 
author,  he  ceases  to  be  conscious  of  his  archaism: 
the  final  e  in  Chaucer  no  longer  strikes  him  as  funny, 
nor  even  the  circumstance  that  he  speaks  of  little 
birds  as  S7nale  fowles.  And  so  it  happened,  that  poets 
in  the  eighteenth  century  who  began  with  burlesque 
imitation  of  the  "  Faerie  Queene  "  soon  fell  in  love  with 
its  serious  beauties. 

The  only  poems  in  this  series  that  have  gained  per- 
manent footing  in  the  literature  are  Shenstone's 
**  Schoolmistress  "  and  Thomson's  "Castle  of  Indo- 
lence." But  a  brief  review  of  several  other  members 
of  the  group  will  be  advisable.  Two  of  them  were 
written  at  Oxford  in  honor  of  the  marriage  of  Fred- 
erick, Prince  of  Wales  in  1736  :  one  by  Richard  Owen 
Cambridge;*  the  other  by  William  Thompson,  then 
bachelor  of  arts  and  afterward  fellow  of  Queen's  Col- 
lege.     Prince   Fred,  it   will   be   remembered,   was  a 

*See  the  sumptuous  edition  of  Cambridge's  "  Works,"  issued  by 
his  son  in  1803. 


The  Spenserians.  87 

somewhat  flamboyant  figure  in  the  literary  and  per- 
sonal gossip  of  his  day.  He  quarreled  with  his  father, 
George  II.,  who  "  hated  boetry  and  bainting,"and  who 
was  ironically  fed  with  soft  dedication  by  Pope  in  his 
"  Epistle  to  Augustus  ";  also  with  his  father's  prime 
minister.  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  "Bob,  the  poet's  foe." 
He  left  the  court  in  dudgeon  and  set  up  an  opposition 
court  of  his  own  where  he  rallied  about  him  men  of 
letters,  who  had  fallen  into  a  neglect  that  contrasted 
strangely  with  their  former  importance  in  the  reign  of 
Queen  Anne.  Frederick's  chief  ally  in  this  policy  was 
his  secretary,  George  Lord  Lyttelton,  the  elegant  if 
somewhat  amateurish  author  of  "  Dialogues  of  the 
Dead"  and  other  works;  the  friend  of  Fielding,  the 
neighbor  of  Shenstone  at  Hagley,  and  the  patron  of 
Thomson,  for  whom  he  obtained  the  sinecure  post  of 
Surveyor  of  the  Leeward  Islands. 

Cambridge's  spousal  verses  were  in  a  ten-lined 
stanza.  His  "Archimage,"  written  in  the  strict 
Spenserian  stanza,  illustrates  the  frequent  employment 
of  this  form  in  occasional  pieces  of  a  humorous  inten- 
tion. It  describes  a  domestic  boating  party  on  the 
Thames,  one  of  the  oarsmen  being  a  family  servant 
and  barber-surgeon,  who  used  to  dress  the  chaplain's 
hair: 

"  Als  would  the  blood  of  ancient  beadsman  spill, 
Whose  hairy  scalps  he  hanged  in  a  row 
Around  his  cave,  sad  sight  to  Christian  eyes,  I  trow." 

Thompson's  experiments,  on  the  contrary,  were 
quite  serious.  He  had  genuine  poetic  feeling,  but  lit- 
tle talent.  In  trying  to  reproduce  Spenser's  richness 
of  imagery  and  the  soft  modulation  of  his  verse,  he 
succeeds   only   in   becoming   tediously   ornate.      His 


88  aA  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

stanzas   are   nerveless,    though    not   unmusical.     His 
college  exercise,  "The  Nativity,"  1736,  is  a  Christmas 
vision  which  comes  to  the  shepherd  boy  Thomalin,  as 
he  is  piping  on  the  banks  of  Isis.     It  employs  the  pas- 
toral machinery,  includes  a  masque  of  virtues, — Faith, 
Hope,  Mercy,  etc., — and  closes  with  a  compliment  to 
Pope's    "Messiah."     The    preface    to    his  "Hymn  to 
May,"   has    some  bearing  upon  our  inquiries:     "As 
Spenser  is  the  most  descriptive  and  florid  of  all  our 
English  writers,  I  attempted  to  imitate  his  manner  in 
the  following  vernal  poem.     I  have  been  very  sparing 
of  the  antiquated  words  which  are  too  frequent  in  most 
of  the  imitations   of  this   author.    .    .    His   lines   are 
most  musically  sweet,  and  his  descriptions  most  deli- 
cately abundant,  even  to  a  wantonness  of  painting,  but 
still  it  is  the  music  and  painting  of  nature.     We  find 
no  ambitious  ornaments  or  epigrammatical  turns  in  his 
writings,  but  a  beautiful  simplicity  which  pleases  far 
above  the  glitter  of  pointed  wit."     The  "Hymn  to 
May  "  is  in  the  seven-lined  stanza  of  Phineas  Fletcher's 
**  Purple  Island";  a  poem,  says  Thompson,    "scarce 
heard  of  in  this  age,  yet  the  best  in  the  allegorical  way 
{next   to    '  The    Fairy    Queen ')    in   the   English    lan- 
guage." 

William  Wilkie,  a  Scotch  minister  and  professor,  of 
eccentric  habits  and  untidy  appearance,  published,  in 
1759,  "A  Dream:  in  the  Manner  of  Spenser,"  which 
may  be  mentioned  here  not  for  its  own  sake,  but  for 
the  evidence  that  it  affords  of  a  growing  impatience 
of  classical  restraints.  The  piece  was  a  pendant  to 
Wilkie's  epic,  the  "  Epigoniad."  Walking  by  the 
Tweed,  the  poet  falls  asleep  and  has  a  vision  of  Homer, 
who  reproaches  him  with  the  bareness  of  style  in  his 


I 


II 


The  Spenserians.  89 

"  Epigoniad."     The  dreamer  puts  the  blame  upon  the 
critics, 

"  Who  tie  the  muses  to  such  rigid  laws 
That  all  their  songs  are  frivolous  and  poor." 

Shakspere,  indeed, 

"  Broke  all  the  cobweb  limits  fixed  by  fools"  ; 
but  the  only  reward  of  his  boldness 

"  Is  that  our  dull,  degenerate  age  of  lead 
Says  that  he  wrote  by  chance,  and  that  he  scarce  could  read." 

One  of  the  earlier  Spenserians  was  Gilbert  West, 
the  translator  of  Pindar,  who  published,  in  1739,  *'  On 
the  Abuse  of  Travelling:  A  Canto  in  Imitation  of 
Spenser."*  Another  imitation,  "Education,"  ap- 
peared in  175 1.  West  was  a  very  tame  poet,  and  the 
only  quality  of  Spenser's  which  he  succeeded  in  catch- 
ing was  his  prolixity.  He  used  the  allegorical  ma- 
chinery of  the  "  Faerie  Queene  "  for  moral  and  mildly 
satirical  ends.     Thus,   in  "  The  Abuse  of  Travelling," 

*  "  Mr.  Walpole  and  I  have  frequently  wondered  you  should  never 
mention  a  certain  imitation  of  Spenser,  published  last  year  by  a  name- 
sake of  yours,  with  which  we  are  all  enraptured  and  enmarveiled." — 
Letter  from  Gray  to  Richard  West,  Florence,  July  i6,  1740.  There 
was  no  relationship  between  Gilbert  West  and  Gray's  Eton  friend, 
though  it  seems  that  the  former  was  also  an  Etonian,  and  was  after- 
wards at  Oxford,  ' '  whence  he  was  seduced  to  a  more  airy  mode  of 
life,"  says  Dr.  Johnson,  "  by  a  commission  in  a  troop  of  horse,  pro- 
cured him  by  his  uncle."  Cambridge,  however,  was  an  acquaintance 
of  Gray,  Walpole,  and  Richard  West,  at  Eton.  Gray's  solitary  son- 
net was  composed  upon  the  death  of  Richard  West  in  1742  ;  and  it 
is  worth  noting  that  in  the  introduction  to  Cambridge's  works  are  a 
number  of  sonnets  by  his  friend  Thomas  Edwards,  himself  a  Spenser 
lover,  whose  "sugared  sonnets  among  his  private  friends"  begin 
about  1750  and  reach  the  number  of  fifty. 


9©  c//  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

the  Red  Cross  Knight  is  induced  by  Archimago  to  em- 
bark in  a  painted  boat  steered  by  Curiosity,  which 
wafts  him  over  to  a  foreign  shore  where  he  is  enter- 
tained by  a  bevy  of  light  damsels  whose  leader  "  hight 
Politessa,"  and  whose  blandishments  the  knight  resists. 
Thence  he  is  conducted  to  a  stately  castle  (the  court 
of  Louis  XV.  whose  minister — perhaps  Cardinal 
Fleury? — is  **an  old  and  runkled  mage");  and  finally 
to  Rome,  where  a  lady  yclept  Vertu  holds  court  in  the 
ruins  of  the  Colosseum,  among  mimes,  fiddlers,  pipers, 
eunuchs,  painters,  and  ciceroni. 

Similarly  the  canto  on  "Education"  narrates  how 
a  fairy  knight,  while  conducting  his  young  son  to  the 
house  of  Paidia,  encounters  the  giant  Custom  and 
worsts  him  in  single  combat.  There  is  some  humor 
in  the  description  of  the  stream  of  science  into  which 
the  crowd  of  infant  learners  are  unwillingly  plunged, 
and  upon  whose  margin  stands 

"  A  birchen  grove  that,  waving  from  the  shore. 
Aye  cast  upon  the  tide  its  falling  bud 
And  with  its  bitter  juice  empoisoned  all  the  flood." 

The  piece  is  a  tedious  arraignment  of  the  pedantic 
methods  of  instruction  in  English  schools  and  colleges. 
A  passage  satirizing  the  artificial  style  of  gardening 
will  be  cited  later.  West  had  a  country-house  at 
Wickham,  in  Kent,  where,  says  Johnson,*  "he  was 
very  often  visited  by  Lyttelton  and  Pitt;  who,  when 
they  were  weary  of  faction  and  debates,  used  at 
Wickham  to  find  books  and  quiet,  a  decent  table  and 
literary  conversation.  There  is  at  Wickham  a  walk 
made  by  Pitt."  Like  many  contemporary  poets,  West 
interested  himself  in  landscape  gardening,  and  some 

*"  Life  of  West." 


7he  Spenserians.  91 

of  his  shorter  pieces  belong  to  that  literature  of  in- 
scriptions to  which  Lyttelton,  Akenside,  Shenstone, 
Mason,  and  others  contributed  so  profusely.  It  may 
be  said  for  his  Spenserian  imitations  that  their  archa- 
isms are  unusually  correct* — if  that  be  any  praise — a 
feature  which  perhaps  recommended  them  to  Gray, 
whose  scholarship  in  this,  as  in  all  points,  was  nicely 
accurate.  The  obligation  to  be  properly  "obsolete" 
in  vocabulary  was  one  that  rested  heavily  on  the  con- 
sciences of  most  of  these  Spenserian  imitators.  "  The 
Squire  of  Dames,"  for  instance,  by  the  wealthy  Jew, 
Moses  Mendez,  fairly  bristles  with  seld-seen  costly 
words,  like  benty,  frannion,  etc.,  which  it  would  have 
puzzled  Spenser  himself  to  explain. 

One  of   the    pleasantest   outcomes  of   this   literary  \ 
fashion   was   William   Shenstone's    "  Schoolmistress,"  (     ^ 
published    in   an   unfinished    shape    in    1737    and,    as    ' 
finally   completed,    in   1742.     This   is   an  affectionate 
half-humorous  description  of  the  little  dame-school  of 
Shenstone's — and  of  everybody's — native  village,  and 
has  the  true  idyllic  touch.     Goldsmith  evidently  had 
it  in  memory  when  he  drew  the  picture  of  the  school 
in  his  **  Deserted  Village."  f     The  application  to  so 

*  Lloyd,  in  "  The  Progress  of  Envy,"  defines  wimpled  as  "  hung 
down"  ;  and  Akenside,  in  "  The  Virtuoso,"  employs  the  ending  ^« 
for  the  singular  verb  ! 

f  Cf.  "  And  as  they  looked,  they  found  their  horror  grew." 

— Shenstone, 
"And  still  they  gazed,  and  still  the  wonder  grew." 

— Goldsmith. 
"  The  noises  intermixed,  which  thence  resound. 
Do  learning's  little  tenement  betray." 

— Shenstone. 
"  There  in  his  noisy  mansion,  skilled  to  rule,"  etc. 

— Goldsmith. 


) 


92  aA  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

humble  a  theme  of  Spenser's  stately  verse  and  grave, 
ancient  words  gives  a  very  quaint  effect.  The  humor 
of  "The  Schoolmistress"  is  genuine,  not  dependent 
on  the  mere  burlesque,  as  in  Pope's  and  Cambridge's 
experiments;  and  it  is  warmed  with  a  certain  tender- 
ness, as  in  the  incident  of  the  hen  with  her  brood  of 
chickens,  entering  the  open  door  of  the  schoolhouse 
in  search  of  crumbs,  and  of  the  grief  of  the  little 
sister  who  witnesses  her  brother's  flogging,  and  of  the 
tremors  of  the  urchins  who  have  been  playing  in  the 
dame's  absence: 

"  Forewarned,  if  little  bird  their  pranks  behold, 
'Twill  whisper  in  her  ear  and  all  the  scene  unfold." 

But  the  only  one  among  the  professed  scholars  of 
Spenser  who  caught  the  glow  and  splendor  of  the 
master  was  James  Thomson.  It  is  the  privilege  of 
genius  to  be  original  even  in  its  imitations.  Thom- 
son took  shape  and  hue  from  Spenser,  but  added 
something  of  his  own,  and  the  result  has  a  value  quite 
independent  of  its  success  as  a  reproduction.  "  The 
Castle  of  Indolence,"  1748,*  is  a  fine  poem;  at  least 
the  first  part  of  it  is,  for  the  second  book  is  tiresomely 
allegorical,  and  somewhat  involved  in  plot.  There  is 
a  magic  art  in  the  description  of  the  "  land  of  drowsy- 
head,"  with  its  "listless  climate"  always  "  atween 
June  and  May,"t  its  "stockdove's  plaint  amid  the 
forest  deep,"  its  hillside  woods  of  solemn  pines,  its 
gay  castles  in  the  summer  clouds,  and  its  murmur  of 

*  The  poem  was  projected,  and  perhaps  partly  written,  fourteen 
or  fifteen  years  earlier. 

f  Cf.  Tennyson's  "  land  in  which  it  seemed  always  afternoon." — 
The  Lotus  Eaters. 


The  Spenserians.  93 

the  distant  main.  The  nucleus  of  Thomson's  concep- 
tion is  to  be  found  in  Spenser's  House  of  Morpheus 
(**  Faerie  Queene,"  book  i.  canto  i.  41),  and  his 
Country  of  Idlesse  is  itself  an  anticipation  of 
Tennyson's  Lotus  Land,  but  verse  like  this  was 
something  new  in  the  poetry  of  the  eighteenth 
century: 

"  Was  nought  around  but  images  of  rest: 
Sleep-soothing  groves  and  quiet  lawns  between  ; 
And  flowery  beds  that  slumbrous  influence  kest, 
From  poppies  breathed;  and  beds  of  pleasant  green, 
Where  never  yet  was  creeping  creature  seen. 
Meantime  unnumbered  glittering  streamlets  played 
And  hurled  everywhere  their  waters  sheen  ; 
That,  as  they  bickered  through  the  sunny  glade, 
Though  restless  still  themselves,  a  lulling  murmur  made." 

"The  Castle  of  Indolence"  had  the  romantic 
iridescence,  the  "atmosphere"  which  is  lacking  to 
the  sharp  contours  of  Augustan  verse.  That  is  to 
say,  it  produces  an  effect  which  cannot  be  wholly 
accounted  for  by  what  the  poet  says;  an  effect  which 
is  wrought  by  subtle  sensations  awakened  by  the  sound 
and  indefinite  associations  evoked  by  the  words.  The 
secret  of  this  art  the  poet  himself  cannot  communicate. 
But  poetry  of  this  kind  cannot  be  translated  into 
prose — as  Pope's  can — any  more  than  music  can  be 
translated  into  speech,  without  losing  its  essential 
character.  Like  Spenser,  Thomson  was  an  exquisite 
colorist  and  his  art  was  largely  pictorial.  But  he  has 
touches  of  an  imagination  which  is  rarer,  if  not  higher 
in  kind,  than  anything  in  Spenser.  The  fairyland 
of  Spenser  is  an  unreal,  but  hardly  an  unearthly  region. 
He    seldom  startles   by  glimpses  behind  the   curtain 


94  <^  History  of  English  'T^pmanticism. 

which  hangs  between  nature  and  the  supernatural,  as 
in  Milton's 

"  Airy  tongues  that  syllable  men's  names 
On  sands  and  shores  and  desert  wildernesses." 

There  is  something  of  this  power  in  one  stanza,  at 
least,  of  "The  Castle  of  Indolence:" 

"  As  when  a  shepherd  of  the  Hebrid  Isles, 
Placed  far  amid  the  melancholy  main 
(Whether  it  be  lone  fancy  him  beguiles, 
Or  that  aerial  beings  sometimes  deign 
To  stand  embodied  to  our  senses  plain), 
Sees  on  the  naked  hill  or  valley  low, 
The  whilst  in  ocean  Phoebus  dips  his  wain, 
A  vast  assembly  moving  to  and  fro, 
Then  all  at  once  in  air  dissolves  the  wondrous  show." 

It  may  be  guessed  that  Johnson  and  Boswell,  in  their 
tour  to  the  Hebrides  or  Western  Islands,  saw  nothing 
of  the  "spectral  puppet  play"  hinted  at  in  this  pas- 
sage— the  most  imaginative  in  any  of  Spenser's  school 
till  we  get  to  Keats' 

"  Magic  casements  opening  on  the  foam 
Of  perilous  seas  in  fairy  lands  forlorn." 

William  Julius  Mickle,  the  translator  of  the 
"Lusiad,"  was  a  more  considerable  poet  than  any  of 
the  Spenserian  imitators  thus  far  reviewed,  with  the 
exception  of  Thomson  and  the  possible  exception  of 
Shenstone.  He  wrote  at  least  two  poems  that  are 
likely  to  be  remembered.  One  of  these  was  the  ballad 
of  "  Cumnor  Hall"  which  suggested  Scott's  "  Kenil- 
worth,"  and  came  near  giving  its  name  to  the  novel. 


II 


The  Spenserians.  95 

The  other  was  the  dialect  song  of  "  The  Mariner's 
Wife,"  which  Burns  admired  so  greatly: 

"  Sae  true  his  heart,  sae  smooth  his  speech, 

His  breath  like  caller  air. 
His  very  foot  has  music  in't, 

As  he  comes  up  the  stair. 
For  there's  nae  luck  about  the  house, 

There  is  nae  luck  at  a'. 
There's  little  pleasure  in  the  house 

When  our  gudeman's  awa'."  * 

Mickle,  like  Thomson,  was  a  Scotchman  who  came 
to  London  to  push  his  literary  fortunes.  He  received 
some  encouragement  from  Lyttelton,  but  was  dis- 
appointed in  his  hopes  of  any  substantial  aid  from  that 
British  Maecenas.  His  biographer  informs  us  that 
"about  his  thirteenth  year,  on  Spenser's  'Faerie 
Queene '  falling  accidentally  in  his  way,  he  was  im- 
mediately struck  with  the  picturesque  descriptions 
of  that  much  admired  ancient  bard  and  powerfully 
incited  to  imitate  his  style  and  manner."  f  In  1767 
Mickle  published  "The  Concubine,"  a  Spenserian 
poem  in  two  cantos.  In  the  preface  to  his  second 
edition,  1778,  in  which  the  title  was  changed  to  "Syr 
Martyn,"  he  said  that:  "  The  fullness  and  wantonness 
of  description,  the  quaint  simplicity,  and,  above  all, 
the  ludicrous,  of  which  the  antique  phraseology  and 
manner  of  Spenser  are  so  happily  and  peculiarly  sus- 
ceptible, inclined  him  to  esteem  it  not  solely  as   the 

*  Mickle 's  authorship  of  this  song  has  been  disputed  in  favor  of 
one  Jean  Adams,  a  poor  Scotch  school-mistress,  whose  poems  were 
printed  at  Glasgow  in  1734. 

fRev.  John  Sim's  "Life  of  Mickle"  in  "  Mickle's  Poetical 
Works,"  1806,  p.  xi. 


96  (^^  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

best,  but  the  only  mode  of  composition  adapted  to  his 
subject." 

"Syr  Marty  n  "  is  a  narrative  poem  not  devoid  of 
animation,  especially  where  the  author  forgets  his 
Spenser.  But  in  the  second  canto  he  feels  compelled 
to  introduce  an  absurd  allegory,  in  which  the  nymph 
Dissipation  and  her  henchman  Self-Imposition  conduct 
the  hero  to  the  cave  of  Discontent.  This  is  how 
Mickle  writes  when  he  is  thinking  of  the  "Faerie 
Queene": 

"  Eke  should  he,  freed  from  foul  enchanter's  spell, 
Escape  his  false  Duessa's  magic  charms, 
And  folly  quaid,  yclept  an  hydra  fell, 
Receive  a  beauteous  lady  to  his  arms  ; 
While  bards  and  minstrels  chaunt  the  soft  alarms 
Of  gentle  love,  unlike  his  former  thrall  : 
Eke  should  I  sing,  in  courtly  cunning  terms, 
The  gallant  feast,  served  up  by  seneschal, 
To  knights  and  ladies  gent  in  painted  hovfer  or  hall." 

And  this  is  how  he  writes  when  he  drops  his  pattern: 

"  Awake,  ye  west  winds,  through  the  lonely  dale. 
And,  Fancy,  to  thy  faerie  bower  betake  ! 
Even  now,  with  balmy  freshness,  breathes  the  gale, 
Dimpling  with  downy  wing  the  stilly  lake  ; 
Through  the  pale  willows  faltering  whispers  wake, 
And  evening  comes  with  locks  bedropt  with  dew  ; 
On  Desmond's  moldering  turrets  slowly  shake 
The  trembling  rye-grass  and  the  harebell  blue, 
And  ever  and  anon  fair  Mulla's  plaints  renew." 

A  reader  would  be  guilty  of  no  very  bad  guess  who 
should  assign  this  stanza— which  Scott  greatly  ad- 
mired—to one  of  the  Spenserian  passages  that  pre- 
lude the  "  Lady  of  the  Lake." 

But   it    is   needless    to    extend    this   catalogue   any 


The  Spenserians.  97 

farther.  By  the  middle  of  the  century  Spenserism  had 
become  so  much  the  fashion  as  to  provoke  a  rebuke 
from  Dr.  Johnson,  who  prowled  up  and  down  before 
the  temple  of  the  British  Muses  Uke  a  sort  of  classical 
watch-dog.  ''The  imitation  of  Spenser,"  said  the 
Rambler  of  May  14,  1751,  "by  the  influence  of  some 
men  of  learning  and  genius,  seems  likely  to  gain 
upon  the  age.  .  .  To  imitate  the  fictions  and  senti- 
ments of  Spenser  can  incur  no  reproach,  for  allegory 
is  perhaps  one  of  the  most  pleasing  vehicles  of  instruc- 
tion. But  I  am  very  far  from  extending  the  same 
respect  to  his  diction  or  his  stanza.  His  style  was,  in 
his  own  time,  allowed  to  be  vicious;  so  darkened  with 
old  words  and  peculiarities  of  phrase,  and  so  remote 
from  common  use,  that  Jonson  boldly  pronounces 
him  to  have  written  no  language.  His  stanza  is  at  once 
difficult  and  unpleasing:  tiresome  to  the  ear  by  its 
uniformity,  and  to  the  attention  by  its  length.  .  . 
Life  is  surely  given  us  for  other  purposes  than  to 
gather  what  our  ancestors  have  wisely  thrown  away 
and  to  learn  what  is  of  no  value  but  because  it  has  been 
forgotten."  *     In  his  "Life  of  West,"  Johnson  says  of 

*  Cf.  Joseph  Warton's  "  Essay  on  Pope,"  Vol.  II.  p.  35.  "  It  has 
been  fashionable  of  late  to  imitate  Spenser  ;  but  the  likeness  of  most 
of  these  copies  hath  consisted  rather  in  using  a  few  of  his  ancient 
expressions  than  in  catching  his  real  manner.  Some,  however,  have 
been  executed  with  happiness,  and  with  attention  to  that  simplicity, 
that  tenderness  of  sentiment  and  those  little  touches  of  nature  that 
constitute  Spenser's  character.  I  have  a  peculiar  pleasure  in  men- 
tioning two  of  them,  '  The  Schoolmistress '  by  Mr.  Shenstone,  and 
'  The  Education  of  Achilles '  by  Mr.  Bedingfield.  And  also  Dr. 
Seattle's  charming  '  Minstrel.'  To  these  must  be  added  that 
exquisite  piece  of  wild  and  romantic  imagery,  Thomson's  '  Castle  of 
Indolence.'" 


98  <iA  History  of  English  T^pmanticism. 

West's  imitations  of  Spenser,  "  Such  compositions  are 
not  to  be  reckoned  among  the  great  achievements  of 
intellect,  because  their  effect  is  local  and  temporary: 
they  appeal  not  to  reason  or  passion,  but  to  memory, 
and  presuppose  an  accidental  or  artificial  state  of 
mind.  An  imitation  of  Spenser  is  nothing  to  a  reader, 
however  acute,  by  whom  Spenser  has  never  been 
perused." 

The  critic  is  partly  right.  The  nice  points  of  a 
parody  are  lost  upon  a  reader  unacquainted  with  the 
thing  parodied.  And  as  for  serious  imitations,  the 
more  cleverly  a  copyist  follows  his  copy,  the  less  value 
his  work  will  have.  The  eighteenth-century  Spen- 
serians,  like  West,  Cambridge,  and  Lloyd,  who  stuck 
most  closely  to  their  pattern,  oblivion  has  covered. 
Their  real  service  was  done  in  reviving  a  taste  for  a 
better  kind  of  poetry  than  the  kind  in  vogue,  and  par- 
ticularly in  restoring  to  English  verse  a  stanza  form, 
which  became  so  noble  an  instrument  in  the  hands  of 
later  poets,  who  used  it  with  as  much  freedom  and 
vigor  as  if  they  had  never  seen  the  "Faerie  Queene." 
One  is  seldom  reminded  of  Spenser  while  reading 
"Childe  Harold"*  or  "  Adonais  "  or  "The  Eve  of 
Saint  Agnes";  but  in  reading  West  or  Cambridge,  or 
even  in  reading  Shenstone  and  Thomson,  one  is 
reminded  of  him  at  every  turn.  Yet  if  it  was  neces- 
sary to  imitate  anyone,  it  might  be  answered  to  Dr. 

*  Byron,  to  be  sure,  began  his  first  canto  with  conscious  Spen- 
serism.  He  called  his  poem  a  "  romaunt,"  and  his  valet,  poor 
Fletcher,  a  "  stanch  yeoman,"  and  peppered  his  stanzas  thinly  with 
sooths  and  wights  and  whiloms,  but  he  gave  over  this  affectation  in 
the  later  cantos  and  made  no  further  excursions  into  the  Middle 
Ages. 


The  Spenser  tans.  99 

Johnson  that  it  was  better  to  imitate  Spenser  than 
Pope.  In  the  imitation  of  Spenser  lay,  at  least,  a 
future,  a  development;  while  the  imitation  of  Pope 
was  conducting  steadily  toward  Darwin's  "Botanic 
Garden." 

It  remains  to  notice  one  more  document  in  the 
history  of  this  Spenserian  revival,  Thomas  Warton's 
**  Observations  on  the  Faerie  Queen,"  1754.  Warton 
wrote  with  a  genuine  delight  in  his  subject.  His 
tastes  were  frankly  romantic.  But  the  apologetic  air 
which  antiquarian  scholars  assumed,  when  venturing 
to  recommend  their  favorite  studies  to  the  attention 
of  a  classically  minded  public,  is  not  absent  from  War- 
ton's  commentary.  He  writes  as  if  he  felt  the  pres- 
sure of  an  unsympathetic  atmosphere  all  about  him. 
"We  who  live  in  the  days  of  writing  by  rule  are  apt  to 
try  every  composition  by  those  laws  which  we  have 
been  taught  to  think  the  sole  criterion  of  excellence. 
Critical  taste  is  universally  diffused,  and  we  require 
the  same  order  and  design  which  every  modern  per- 
formance is  expected  to  have,  in  poems  where  they 
never  were  regarded  or  intended.  .  .  If  there  be  any 
poem  whose  graces  please  because  they  are  situated 
beyond  the  reach  of  art*.  .  .  it  is  this.  In  reading 
Spenser,  if  the  critic  is  not  satisfied,  yet  the  reader  is 
transported."  "In  analyzing  the  plan  and  conduct 
of  this  poem,  I  have  so  far  tried  it  by  epic  rules,  as 
to  demonstrate  the  inconveniences  and  incongruities 
which  the  poet  might  have  avoided,  had  he  been  more 
studious  of  design  and  uniformity.  It  is  true  that 
his  romantic  materials  claim  great  liberties;    but  no 

*  Pope's,  "  Snatch  a  grace  beyond  the  reach  of  art." 

— Essay  on  Criticism. 


loo  <iA  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

materials  exclude  order  and  perspicacity."  Warton 
assures  the  reader  that  Spenser's  language  is  not  "so 
difficult  and  obsolete  as  it  is  generally  supposed  to 
be;"  and  defends  him  against  Hume's  censure,*  that 
"  Homer  copied  true  natural  manners  .  .  .  but  the 
pencil  of  the  English  poet  was  employed  in  draw- 
ing the  affectations  and  conceits  and  fopperies  of 
chivalry." 

Yet  he  began  his  commentary  with  the  stock 
denunciations  of  "Gothic  ignorance  and  barbarity," 
"  At  the  renaissance  it  might  have  been  expected  that, 
instead  of  the  romantic  manner  of  poetical  composi- 
tion ...  a  new  and  more  legitimate  taste  of  writing 
would  have  succeeded.  .  .  But  it  was  a  long  time 
before  such  a  change  was  effected.  We  find  Ariosto, 
many  years  after  the  revival  of  letters,  rejecting  truth 
for  magic,  and  preferring  the  ridiculous  and  incoherent 
excursions  of  Boiardo  to  the  propriety  and  uniformity 
of  the  Grecian  and  Roman  models.  Nor  did  the 
restoration  of  ancient  learning  produce  any  effectual 
or  immediate  improvement  in  the  state  of  criticism. 
Beni,  one  of  the  most  celebrated  critics  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  was  still  so  infatuated  with  a  fondness  for  the 
old  Provencal  vein,  that  he  ventured  to  write  a  regular 
dissertation,  in  which  he  compares  Ariosto  with 
Homer."  Warton  says  again,  of  Ariosto  and  the 
Italian  renaissance  poets  whom  Spenser  followed,  "I 
have  found  no  fault  in  general  with  their  use  of  magical 
machinery;  notwithstanding  I  have  so  far  conformed 
to  the  reigning  maxims  of  modern  criticism  as  to 
recommend  classical  propriety."  Notwithstanding 
this  prudent  determination  to  conform,  the  author 
*"  History  of  England,"  Vol.  II.  p.  739. 


The  Spenserians.  loi 

takes  heart  in  his  second  volume  to  speak  out  as  fol- 
lows about  the  pseudo-classic  poetry  of  his  own  age: 
"  A  poetry  succeeded  in  which  imagination  gave  way 
to  correctness,  sublimity  of  description  to  delicacy 
of  sentiment,  and  majestic  imagery  to  conceit  and 
epigram.  Poets  began  now  to  be  more  attentive  to 
words  than  to  things  and  objects.  The  nicer  beauties 
of  happy  expression  were  preferred  to  the  daring 
strokes  of  great  conception.  Satire,  that  bane  of  the 
sublime,  was  imported  from  France.  The  muses  were 
debauched  at  court;  and  polite  life  and  familiar  man- 
ners became  their  only  themes." 

By  the  time  these  words  were  written  Spenser  had 
done  his  work.  Color,  music,  fragrance  were  stealing 
back  again  into  English  song,  and  ''  golden-tongued 
romance  with  serene  lute  "  stood  at  the  door  of  the 
new  age,  waiting  for  it  to  open. 


CHAPTER  IV. 
XLbc  XanDscape  poets. 

There  is  nothing  necessarily  romantic  in  literature 
that  concerns  itself  with  rural  life  or  natural  scenery. 
Yet  we  may  accept,  with  some  qualification,  the  truth 
of  Professor  McClintock's  statement,  that  the  "  begin- 
ning and  presence  of  a  creative,  romantic  movement  is 
almost  always  shown  by  the  love,  study,  and  interpre- 
tation of  physical  nature."*  Why  this  should  be  true, 
at  all  events  of  the  romantic  movement  that  began  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  is  obvious  enough.  Ruskin  and 
Leslie  Stephen  have  already  been  quoted,  as  witnesses 
to  the  fact  that  naturalism  and  romanticism  had  a 
common  root:  the  desire,  namely,  to  escape  into  the 
fresh  air  and  into  freer  conditions,  from  a  literature 
which  dealt,  in  a  strictly  regulated  way,  with  the  in- 
door life  of  a  highly  artificial  society.  The  pastoral 
had  ceased  to  furnish  any  relief.  Professing  to  chant 
the  praises  of  innocence  and  simplicity,  it  had  become 
itself  utterly  unreal  and  conventional,  in  the  hands  of 
cockneys  like  Philips  and  Pope.  When  the  romantic 
spirit  took  possession  of  the  poetry  of  nature,  it  mani- 
fested itself  in  a  passion  for  wildness,  grandeur,  soli- 
tude. Of  this  there  was  as  yet  comparatively  little 
even  in  the  verse  of  Thomson,  Shenstone,  Akenside, 
and  Dyer. 

*W.  D.   McClintock,  "The  Romantic  and  Classical  in   English 
Literature,"  Chautauquan,  Vol.  XIV.  p.  1S7, 


The  Landscape  Toets.  103 

Still  the  work  of  these  pioneers  in  the  ''return  to 
nature  "  represents  the  transition,  and  must  be  taken 
into  account  in  any  complete  history  of  the  romantic 
movement.  The  first  two,  as  we  have  seen,  were 
among  the  earliest  Spenserians:  Dyer  was  a  landscape 
painter,  as  well  as  a  poet;  and  Shenstone  was  one  of 
the  best  of  landscape  gardeners.  But  it  is  the  begin- 
nings that  are  important.  It  will  be  needless  to 
pursue  the  history  of  nature  poetry  into  its  later 
developments;  needless  to  review  the  writings  of 
Cowper  and  Crabbe,  for  example, — neither  of  whom 
was  romantic  in  any  sense, — or  even  of  Wordsworth, 
the  spirit  of  whose  art,  as  a  whole,  was  far  from 
romantic. 

Before  taking  up  the  writers  above  named,  one  by 
one,  it  will  be  well  to  notice  the  general  change  in  the 
forms  of  verse,  which  was  an  outward  sign  of  the 
revolution  in  poetic  feeling.  The  imitation  of  Spenser 
was  only  one  instance  of  a  readiness  to  lay  aside  the 
heroic  couplet  in  favor  of  other  kinds  which  it  had 
displaced,  and  in  the  interests  of  greater  variety. 
"During  the  twenty-five  years,"  says  Mr.  Gosse, 
"from  the  publication  of  Thomson's  'Spring' 
['Winter']  in  1726,  to  that  of  Gray's  'Elegy'  in 
1751,  the  nine  or  ten  leading  poems  or  collections  of 
verse  which  appeared  wer^  all  of  a  new  type;  somber, 
as  a  rule,  certainly  stately,  romantic  in  tone  to  the 
extreme,  prepared  to  return,  ignorantly  indeed,  but 
with  respect,  to  what  was  '  Gothic  '  in  manners,  archi- 
tecture, and  language ;  all  showing  a  more  or  less  vague 
aspiration  towards  the  study  of  nature,  and  not  one 
composed  in  the  heroic  couplet  hitherto  so  vigorously 
imposed  on    serious  verse.       'The   Seasons,'    'Night 


104  (v^  History  of  English  'T{omanticism. 

/Thoughts'    and     'The    Grave'  are  written  in    blank 

;  verse:    *  The  Castle   of   Indolence'  and  '  The  School- 

V>  i  mistress  *    in  Spenserian    stanza;     'The   Spleen'  and 

I  *  Grongar  Hill'  in  octosyllabics,  while  the  early  odes 

iof  Gray  and  those  of  Collins  are  composed  in  a  great 

variety  of  simple  but  novel  lyric  measures."  * 

The  only  important  writer  who  had  employed  blank 
verse  in  undramatic  poetry  between  the  publication 
of  "Paradise  Regained"  in  1672,  and  Thomson's 
"Winter"  in  1726,  was  John  Philips.  In  the  brief 
prefatory  note  to  "Paradise  Lost,"  the  poet  of 
"  L'Allegro  "  and  "  II  Penseroso,"  forgetting  or  dis- 
daining the  graces  of  his  youthful  muse,  had  spoken 
of  rhyme  as  "  the  invention  of  a  barbarous  age, "  as  "  a 
thing  trivial  and  of  no  true  musical  delight."  Milton's 
example,  of  course,  could  not  fail  to  give  dignity  and 
authority  to  the  majestic  rhythm  that  he  had  used; 
and  Philips'  mock-heroic  "The  Splendid  Shilling" 
(1701),  his  occasional  piece,  "Blenheim"  (1705),  and 
his  Georgic  "  Cyder  "  (1706),  were  all  in  avowed  imita- 
tion of  Milton.  But  the  well-nigh  solitary  character  of 
Philips'  experiments  was  recognized  by  Thomson,  in 
his  allusion  to  the  last-named  poem: 

"  Philips,  Pomona's  bard,  the  second  thou 
Who  nobly  durst,  in  rime-unfettered  verse. 
With  British  freedom  sing  the  British  song."  f 

In  speaking  of  Philips'  imitations  of  Milton,  John- 
son said  that  if  the  latter  "had  written  after  the 
improvements  made    by  Dryden,   it  is   reasonable   to 

*  "  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,"  p.  207. 
f  "  Autumn,"  lines  645-47. 


The  Landscape  'Poets.  105 

believe  he  would  have  admitted  a  more  pleasing 
modulation  of  numbers  into  his  work."  *  Johnson 
hated  Adam  Smith,  but  when  Boswell  mentioned  that 
Smith,  in  his  rhetorical  lectures  at  Glasgow  Univer- 
sity, had  given  the  preference  to  rhyme  over  blank 
verse,  the  doctor  exclaimed,  ''Sir,  I  was  once  in 
company  with  Smith  and  we  did  not  take  to  each 
other;  but  had  I  known  that  he  loved  rhyme  as 
much  as  you  tell  me  he  does,  I  should  have  hugged 
him." 

In  1725  James  Thomson,  a  young  Scotchman,  came 
to  London  to  push  his  literary  fortunes.  His  country- 
man, David  Malloch, — or  Mallet,  as  he  called  himself 
in  England, — at  that  time  private  tutor  in  the  family  of 
the  Duke  of  Montrose,  procured  Thomson  introduc- 
tions into  titled  society,  and  helped  him  to  bring  out 
"Winter,"  the  first  installment  of  "The  Seasons," 
which  was  published  in  1726.  Thomson's  friend  and 
biographer  (1762),  the  Rev.  Patrick  Murdoch,  says 
that  the  poem  was  "no  sooner  read  than  universally 
admired;  those  only  excepted  who  had  not  been  used 
to  feel,  or  to  look  for  anything  in  poetry  beyond  a  point 
of  satirical  or  epigrammatic  wit,  a  smart  antithesis 
richly  trimmed  with  rhyme."  This  is  a  palpable  hit 
at  the  Popean  school;  and  indeed  there  could  be  no 
stronger  contrast  than  between  Thomson  and  Pope, 
not  alone  in  subject  and  feeling,  but  in  diction  and 
verse.  Thomson's  style  is  florid  and  luxuriant,  his 
numbers  flowing  and  diffuse,  while  Pope  had  wonted 
the  English  ear  to  the  extreme  of  compression  in  both 
language  and  meter.  Pope  is  among  the  most  quota- 
ble of  poets,  while  Thomson's  long  poem,  in  spite  of 

*"  Life  of  Philips." 


io6  iA  History  of  English  'T^manticism. 

its  enduring  popularity,  has  contributed  but  a  single 
phrase  to  the  stock  of  current  quotation: 

"  To  teach  the  young  idea  how  to  shoot." 

"Winter"  was  followed  by  "Summer"  in  1727, 
"Spring"  in  1728,  and  the  completed  "Seasons" 
in  1730.  Thomson  made  many  changes  and  additions 
in  subsequent  editions.  The  original  "Seasons"  con- 
tained only  3902  lines  (exclusive  of  the  "Hymn"), 
while  the  author's  final  revision  of  1746  gave  5413. 
One  proof  that  "The  Seasons"  was  the  work  of  a 
fresh  and  independent  genius  is  afforded  by  the  many 
imitations  to  which  it  soon  gave  birth.  In  Germany, 
a  passage  from  Brookes'  translation  (1745)  was  set  to 
music  by  Haydn.  J.  P.  Uz  (1742)  and  Wieland  each 
producd  a  "Friihling,"  in  Thomson's  manner;  but  the 
most  distinguished  of  his  German  disciples  was 
Ewald  Christian  von  Kleist,  whose  "Friihling" 
(1749)  was  a  description  of  a  country  walk  in  spring, 
in  460  hexameter  lines,  accompanied,  as  in  Thomson's 
"Hymn,"  with  a  kind  of  "Gloria  in  excelsis,"  to  the 
creator  of  nature.  "The  Seasons"  was  translated 
into  French  by  Madame  Bontemps  in  1759,  and  called 
forth,  among  other  imitations,  "Les  Saisons  "  of  Saint 
Lambert,  1769  (revised  and  extended  in  1771.)  In 
England,  Thomson's  influence  naturally  manifested 
itself  less  in  direct  imitations  of  the  scheme  of  his 
poem  than  in  the  contagion  of  his  manner,  which 
pervades  the  work  of  many  succeeding  poets,  such  as 
Akenside,  Armstrong,  Dyer,  Somerville  and  Mallet. 
"  There  was  hardly  one  verse  writer  of  any  eminence," 
says  Gosse,  *  "from    1725-50,  who  was   not  in  some 

*  "  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,"  p.  221. 


The  Landscape  T'oets.  107 

manner  guided  or  biased  by  Thomson,  whose  genius  is 
to  this  day  fertile  in  English  literature." 

We  have  grown  so  accustomed  to  a  more  intimate 
treatment  and  a  more  spiritual  interpretation  of 
nature,  that  we  are  perhaps  too  apt  to  undervalue 
Thomson's  simple  descriptive  or  pictorial  method. 
Compared  with  Wordsworth's  mysticism,  with  Shelley's 
passionate  pantheism,  with  Byron's  romantic  gloom  in 
presence  of  the  mountains  and  the  sea,  with  Keats'  joy- 
ous re-creation  of  mythology,  with  Thoreau's  Indian- 
like approach  to  the  innermost  arcana — with  a  dozen 
other  moods  familiar  to  the  modern  mind — it  seems 
to  us  unimaginative.  Thomson  has  been  likened,  as 
a  colorist,  to  Rubens;  and  possibly  the  glow,  the 
breadth,  and  the  vital  energy  of  his  best  passages, 
as  of  Rubens'  great  canvases,  leave  our  finer  percep- 
tions untouched,  and  we  ask  for  something  more 
esoteric,  more  intense.  Still  there  are  permanent  and 
solid  qualities  in  Thomson's  landscape  art,  which  can 
give  delight  even  now  to  an  unspoiled  taste.  To  a 
reader  of  his  own  generation,  "The  Seasons"  must 
have  come  as  the  revelation  of  a  fresh  world  of 
beauty.  Such  passages  as  those  which  describe  the 
first  spring  showers,  the  thunderstorm  in  summer,  the 
trout-fishing,  the  sheep-washing,  and  the  terrors  of 
the  winter  night,  were  not  only  strange  to  the  public 
of  that  day,  but  were  new  in  English  poetry. 

That  the  poet  was  something  of  a  naturalist,  who 
wrote  lovingly  and  with  his  "eye  upon  the  object," 
is  evident  from  a  hundred  touches,  like  "auriculas 
with  shining  meal "; 

"The  yellow  wall-flower  stained  with  iron  brown  ;  " 
or, 


io8  tt/^  History  of  English  l{omanticism. 

"  The  bittern  knows  his  time,  with  bill  engulfed, 
To  shake  the  sounding  marsh."  * 

Thomson's  scenery  was  genuine.  His  images  of 
external  nature  are  never  false  and  seldom  vague, 
like  Pope's.  In  a  letter  to  Lyttelton,f  he  speaks  of 
"the  Muses  of  the  great  simple  country,  not  the 
little  fine-lady  Muses  of  Richmond  Hill."  His 
delineations,  if  less  sharp  and  finished  in  detail  than 
Cowper's,  have  greater  breadth.  Coleridge's  com- 
parison of  the  two  poets  is  well  known:  "The  love 
of  nature  seems  to  have  led  Thomson  to  a  cheerful 
religion,  and  a  gloomy  religion  to  have  led  Cowper  to 
a  love  of  nature.  .  .  In  chastity  of  diction  and  the 
harmony  of  blank  verse,  Cowper  leaves  Thomson 
immeasurably  below  him;  yet  I  still  feel  the  latter  to 
have  been  the  born  poet." 

The  geologist  Hugh  Miller,  who  visited  Lyttelton's 
country  seat  at  Hagley  in  1845,  describes  the  famous 
landscape  which  Thomson  had  painted  in  "Spring": 

"  Meantime  you  gain  the  height  from  whose  fair  brow 
The  bursting  prospect  spreads  immense  around, 
And,  snatched  o'er  hill  and  dale  and  wood  and  lawn, 
And  verdant  field  and  darkening  heath  between. 
And  villages  embosomed  soft  in  trees, 
And  spiry  towns,  by  surging  columns  marked 
Of  household  smoke,  your  eye  extensive  roams.    .    . 
To  where  the  broken  landscape,  by  degrees 
Ascending,  roughens  into  rigid  hills, 
O'er  which  the  Cambrian  mountains,  like  far  clouds, 
That  skirt  the  blue  horizon,  dusky  rise." 

* Cf.  Chaucer:  "And  as  a  bitoure  bumbleth  in  the  mire." 

—  Wyf  of  Bathes  Tale. 
f  Phillimore's  "  Life  of  Lyttelton,"  Vol.  I.  p.  286. 


The  Landscape  Toets.  109. 

**The  entire  prospect,"  says  Miller,* — "one  of  the 
finest  in  England,  and  eminently  characteristic  of 
what  is  best  in  English  scenery — enabled  me  to  under- 
stand what  I  had  used  to  deem  a  peculiarity — in  some 
measure  a  defect — in  the  landscapes  of  the  poet 
Thomson.  It  must  have  often  struck  the  Scotch 
reader  that,  in  dealing  with  very  extended  prospects, 
he  rather  enumerates  than  describes.  His  pictures 
are  often  mere  catalogues,  in  which  single  words 
stand  for  classes  of  objects,  and  in  which  the  entire 
poetry  seems  to  consist  in  an  overmastering  sense  of 
vast  extent,  occupied  by  amazing  multiplicity.  .  . 
Now  the  prospect  from  the  hill  at  Hagley  furnished 
me  with  the  true  explanation  of  this  enumerative 
style.  Measured  along  the  horizon,  it  must,  on  the 
lowest  estimate,  be  at  least  fifty  miles  in  longitudinal 
extent;  measured  laterally,  from  the  spectator  for- 
wards, at  least  twenty.  .  .  The  real  area  must  rather 
exceed  than  fall  short  of  a  thousand  square  miles: 
the  fields  into  which  it  is  laid  out  are  small,  scarcely 
averaging  a  square  furlong  in  superficies.  .  .  With 
these  there  are  commixed  innumerable  cottages, 
manor-houses,  villages,  towns.  Here  the  surface  is 
dimpled  by  unreckoned  hollows;  there  fretted  by 
uncounted  mounds;  all  is  amazing,  overpowering 
multiplicity — a  multiplicity  which  neither  the  pen  nor 
the  pencil  can  adequately  express;  and  so  description, 
in  even  the  hands  of  a  master,  sinks  into  mere  enumer- 
ation.    The  picture  becomes  a  catalogue." 

Wordsworth  f  pronounced  ''  The  Seasons  "  **  a  work 
of  inspiration,"  and  said  that  much  of  it  was  "written 

*  "  First  Impressions  of  England,"  p.  135. 

f  Appendix  to  Preface  to  the  Second  Edition  of  "  Lyrical  Ballads." 


no  <i/l  History  of  English  l^omanticism. 

from  himself,  and  nobly  from  himself," but  complained 
that  the  style  was  vicious.  Thomson's  diction  is,  in 
truth,  not  always  worthy  of  his  poetic  feeling  and 
panoramic  power  over  landscape.  It  is  academic  and 
often  tumid  and  wordy,  abounding  in  latinisms  like 
effusive,  precipitaiit,  irriguous,  horrific,  turgent,  amusive. 
The  lover  who  hides  by  the  stream  where  his  mistress 
is  bathing — that  celebrated  "serio-comic  bathing" — 
is  described  as  ''the  latent  Damon";  and  when  the 
poet  advises  against  the  use  of  worms  for  trout  bait, 
he  puts  it  thus: 

"  But  let  not  on  your  hook  the  tortured  worm 
Convulsive  writhe  in  agonizing  folds,"  etc. 

The  poets  had  now  begun  to  withdraw  from  town 
and  go  out  into  the  country,  but  in  their  retirement  to 
the  sylvan  shades  they  were  accompanied  sometimes, 
indeed,  by  Milton's  "mountain  nymph,  sweet  Liberty," 
but  quite  as  frequently  by  Shenstone's  nymph,  "coy 
Elegance,"  who  kept  reminding  them  of  Vergil. 

Thomson's  blank  verse,  although,  as  Coleridge  says, 

inferior  to  Cowper's,  is  often  richly  musical  and  with 

an  energy  unborrowed  of  Milton — as  Cowper's  is  too 

apt  to  be,  at  least  in  his  translation  of  Homer.*     Mr. 

*  There  are,  of  course,  Miltonic  reminiscences  in  "  The  Seasons." 

The  moon's  "  spotted  disk  "  ("  Autumn,"  1091)  is  Milton's  "  spotty 

globe."     The   apostrophe  to   light  ("Spring"  90-96)   borrows   its 

"efflux  divine"  from  Milton's  "bright  effluence  of  bright  essence 

increate"  ("  Paradise  Lost,"    III.     1-12.)     And  ^/.      "Autumn," 

783-84: 

" — from  Imaus  stretcht 

Athwart  the  roving  Tartar's  sullen  bounds," 

with  P.  L.,  III.  431-32;  and  "Winter,"  1005-08. 

' ' — moors 

Beneath  the  shelter  of  an  icy  isle, 

While  night  o'erwhelms  the  sea." 

with  P.  L.,  I.  207-208. 


The  Landscape  Toets.  1 1 1 

Saintsbury  *  detects  a  mannerism  in  the  verse  of 
"The  Seasons,"  which  he  illustrates  by  citing  three 
lines  with  which  the  poet  "  caps  the  climax  of  three 
several  descriptive  passages,  all  within  the  compass  of 
half  a  dozen  pages,"  viz. : 

"  And  Egypt  joys  beneath  the  spreading  wave." 
"  And  Mecca  saddens  at  the  long  delay." 
"And  Thule bellows  through  her  utmost  isles." 

It  would  be  easy  to  add  many  other  instances  of 
this  type  of  climacteric  line,  e.  g.   ("Summer,"  859), 

"  And  Ocean  trembles  for  his  green  domain." 

For  the  blank  verse  of  "  The  Seasons  "  is  a  blank  verse 
which  has  been  passed  through  the  strainer  of  the 
heroic  couplet.  Though  Thomson,  in  the  flow  and 
continuity  of  his  measure,  offers,  as  has  been  said,  the 
greatest  contrast  to  Pope's  system  of  versification; 
yet  wherever  he  seeks  to  be  nervous,  his  modulation 
reminds  one  more  of  Pope's  antithetical  trick  than  of 
Shakspere's  or  Milton's  freer  structure.  For  instance 
("Spring,"  1015): 

"  Fills  every  sense  and  pants  in  every  vein." 

or  {Ibid.  1 104) : 

"  Flames  through  the  nerves  and  boils  along  the  veins." 

To  relieve  the  monotony  of  a  descriptive  poem,  the 
author  introduced  moralizing  digressions:  advice  to 
the  husbandman  and  the  shepherd  after  the  manner  of 
the  "Georgics";  compliments  to  his  patrons,  like 
Lyttelton,    Bubb    Dodington,  and    the    Countess    of 

*  "  Ward's  English  Poets,"  Vol.  III.  p.  171. 


112  c^  History  of  English  'T^omanticism. 

Hertford;  and  sentimental  narrative  episodes,  such  as 
the  stories  of  Damon  and  Musidora,*  .and  Celadon 
and  Amelia  in  "Summer,"  and  of  Lavinia  and  Palemonf 
in  **  Autumn  ";  while  ever  and  anon  his  eye  extensive 
roamed  over  the  phenomena  of  nature  in  foreign 
climes,  the  arctic  night,  the  tropic  summer,  etc. 
Wordsworth  asserts  that  these  sentimental  passages 
*'are  the  parts  of  the  work  which  were  probably  most 
efficient  in  first  recommending  the  author  to  general 
notice."!  They  strike  us  now  as  insipid  enough. 
But  many  coming  attitudes  cast  their  shadows  before 
across  the  page  of  "The  Seasons."  Thomson's  de- 
nunciation of  the  slave  trade,  and  of  cruelty  to  animals, 
especially  the  caging  of  birds  and  the  coursing  of 
hares;  his  preference  of  country  to  town;  his  rhapso- 
dies on  domestic  love  and  the  innocence  of  the  Golden 
Age;  his  contrast  between  the  misery  of  the  poor  and 
the  heartless  luxury  of  the  rich;  all  these  features  of 
the  poem  foretoken  the  sentimentalism  of  Sterne  and 
Goldsmith,  and  the  humaaitarianism  of  Cowper  and 
Burns.  They  anticipate,  in  particular,  that  half  af- 
fected itch  of  simplicity  which  titillated  the  sensibili- 
ties of  a  corrupt  and  artificial  society  in  the  writings 
of  Rousseau  and  the  idyllic  pictures  of  Bernardin  de 
St.  Pierre's  "Paul  and  Virginia."     Thomson  went  so 

*  There  were  originally  iAree  damsels  in  the  bathing  scene! 

f  It  was  to  this  episode  that  Pope  supplied  the  lines  (207-14) 
"Thoughtless  of  beauty,  she  was  beauty's  self,"  etc., 
which  form  his  solitary  essay  in  blank  verse.     Thomson  told  Col- 
lins that  he  took  the  first  hint  of  "The  Seasons"  from  the  names 
of    the     divisions — Spring,    Summer,    Autumn,    Winter — in    Pope's 
"  Pastorals." 

X  Appendix  to  Preface  to  Second  Edition  of  "  Lyrical  Ballads." 


The  Landscape  Toets.  113 

far  in  this  vein  as  to  decry  the  use  of  animal  food  in  a 
passage  which  recalls  Goldsmith's  stanza:  * 

"  No  flocks  that  range  the  valley  free 
To  slaughter  I  condemn: 
Taught  by  the  power  that  pities  me, 
I  learn  to  pity  them." 

This  sort  of  thing  was  in  the  air.     Pope  was  not  a 
sentimental  person,  yet  even  Pope  had  written 

"  The  lamb  thy  riot  dooms  to  bleed  to-day, 
Had  he  thy  reason,  would  he  skip  and  play  ? 
Pleased  to  the  last,  he  crops  the  flowery  food. 
And  licks  the  hand  just  raised  to  shed  his  blood."  f 

It  does  not  appear  that  Thomson  was  personally 
averse  to  a  leg  of  mutton.  His  denunciations  of 
luxury,  and  his  praise  of  early  rising  J  and  cold  bath- 
ing §  sound  rather  hollow  from  the  lips  of  a  bard — 
"  more  fat  than  bard  beseems  " — who  used  to  lie  abed 
till  noon,  and  who,  as  Savage  told  Johnson,  *'  was  per- 
haps never  in  cold  water  in  his  life."  Johnson  reports, 
not  without  some  spice  of  malice,  that  the  Countess  of 
Hertford,  "  whose  practice  it  was  to  invite  every  sum- 
mer some  poet  into  the  country,  to  hear  her  verses  and 
assist  her  studies,"  extended  this  courtesy  to  Thomson, 
"who  took  more  delight  in  carousing  with  Lord  Hert- 
ford  and    his   friends    than   assisting   her    ladyship's 

*"The  Hermit." 

f  "  Essay  on  Man,"  Epistle  I. 

\  "  Falsely  luxurious,  will  not  man  awake  ?"  etc. 

— Summer,  67. 
§  "  Nor,  when  cold  winter  keens  the  brightening  flood, 
Would  I,  weak  shivering,  linger  on  the  brink." 

— /i>ii^.  1259-60, 


\ 


114  «t/^  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

poetical  operations,  and  therefore  never  received 
another  summons."  * 

The  romantic  note  is  not  absent  from  "The 
Seasons,"  but  it  is  not  prominent.  Thomson's  theme 
was  the  changes  of  the  year  as  they  affect  the  English 
landscape,  a  soft,  cultivated  landscape  of  lawns,  gar- 
dens, fields,  orchards,  sheep-walks,  and  forest  pre- 
serves. Only  now  and  then  that  attraction  toward  the 
savage,  the  awful,  the  mysterious,  the  primitive,  which 
marks  the  romantic  mood  in  naturalistic  poetry,  shows 
itself  in  touches  like  these: 

"  High  from  the  summit  of  a  craggy  cliff, 
Hung  o'er  the  deep,  such  as  amazing  frowns 
On  utmost  Kilda's  shore,  whose  lonely  race 
Resigns  the  setting  sun  to  Indian  worlds."  f 

"  Or  where  the  Northern  Ocean,  in  vast  whirls. 
Boils  round  the  naked,  melancholy  isles 
Of  farthest  Thule,  and  the  Atlantic  surge 
Pours  in  among  the  stormy  Hebrides." | 

Compare  also  the  description  of  the  thunderstorm  in 

the  mountains  ("  Summer,"  1156-68),  closing  with  the 

lines: 

"  Far  seen  the  heights  of  heathy  Cheviot  blaze, 
And  Thule  bellows  through  her  utmost  isles." 

The  Western  Islands  appear  to  have  had  a  peculiar 
fascination  for  Thomson.  The  passages  above  quoted, 
and  the  stanza  from  "The  Castle  of  Indolence,"  cited 
on  page  94,  gave  Collins  the  clew  for  his  "  Ode  on 
the  Superstitions  of  the  Scottish  Highlands,"  which 
contained,    says    Lowell,    the    whole    romantic   school 

*"  Life  of  Thomson."  {"Spring."     755-58. 

t  "  Autumn,"  862-65. 


The  Landscape  Toets.  115 

in  the  germ.  Thomson  had  perhaps  found  the 
embryon  atom  in  Milton's  "  stormy  Hebrides,"  in 
"Lycidas,"  whose  echo  is  prolonged  in  Words- 
worth's *'  Solitary  Reaper  " — 

"  Breaking  the  silence  of  the  seas 
Among  the  farthest  Hebrides." 

Even  Pope — he  had  a  soul — was  not  unsensitive  to 
this,  as  witness  his 

"  Loud  as  the  wolves,  on  Orcas'  stormy  steep, 
Howl  to  the  roarings  of  the  Northern  deep."  * 

The  melancholy  which  Victor  Hugo  pronounces  a  dis- 
tinguishing badge  of  romantic  art,  and  which  we  shall 
see  gaining  more  and  more  upon  English  poetry  as 
the  century  advanced,  is  also  discernible  in  "  The 
Seasons  "  in  a  passage  like  the  following: 

"  O  bear  me  then  to  vast  embowering  shades, 
To  twilight  groves  and  visionary  vales, 
To  weeping  grottos  and  prophetic  glooms  ; 
Where  angel-forms  athwart  the  solemn  dusk 
Tremendous  sweep,  or  seem  to  sweep  along  ; 
And  voices  more  than  human,  through  the  void, 
Deep-sounding,  seize  the  enthusiastic  ear  ;  "  f 

or  this,  which  recalls  "II  Penseroso": 

"  Now  all  amid  the  rigors  of  the  year. 

In  the  wild  depth  of  winter,  while  without 
The  ceaseless  winds  blow  ice,  be  my  retreat 

*  "  Epistle  to  Augustus." 

f  "  Autumn,"  1030-37.     Cf.  Cowper's 

"  O  for  a  lodge  in  some  vast  wilderness. 
Some  boundless  contiguity  of  shade  !  " 


ii6  <i/J  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

Between  the  groaning  forest  and  the  shore, 

Beat  by  the  boundless  multitude  of  waves, 

A  rural,  sheltered,  solitary  scene  ; 

Where  ruddy  fire  and  beaming  tapers  join 

To  cheer  the  gloom.     There  studious  let  me  sit 

And  hold  high  converse  with  the  mighty  dead."  * 

The  revival  again,  of  the  preternatural  and  of  popular 
superstitions  as  literary  material,  after  a  rationalizing 
and  skeptical  age,  is  signalized  by  such  a  passage  as 
this: 

"  Onward  they  pass,  o'er  many  a  panting  height. 
And  valley  sunk  and  unfrequented,  where 
At  fall  of  eve  the  fairy  people  throng. 
In  various  game  and  revelry  to  pass 
The  summer  night,  as  village  stories  tell. 
But  far  around  they  wander  from  the  grave 
Of  him  whom  his  ungentle  fortune  urged 
Against  his  own  sad  breast  to  lift  the  hand 
Of  impious  violence.     The  lonely  tower 
Is  also  shunned,  whose  mournful  chambers  hold, 
So  night-struck  fancy  dreams,  the  yelling  ghost." 

It  may  not  be  uninstructive  to  note  the  occurrence  of 
the  word  romantic  at  several  points  in  the  poem: 

' '  glimmering  shades  and  sympathetic  glooms, 
Where  the  dim  umbrage  o'er  the  falling  stream 
Romantic  hangs. f 

This  is  from  a  passage  in  which  romantic  love  once 
more  comes  back  into  poetry,  after  its  long  eclipse; 
and  in  which  the  lover  is  depicted  as  wandering  abroad 
at  "pensive  dusk,"  or  by  moonlight,  through  groves 

*  "Winter,"  424-32.  f  "  Spring,"  1026-28. 


The  Landscape  Toets.  117 

and  along  brooksides.*  The  word  is  applied  likewise 
to  clouds,  "rolled  into  romantic  shapes,  the  dream  of 
waking  fancy";  and  to  the  scenery  of  Scotland — 
"  Caledonia  in  romantic  view."  In  a  subtler  way,  the 
feeling  of  such  lines  as  these  is  romantic: 

"  Breathe  your  still  song  into  the  reaper's  heart. 
As  home  he  goes  beneath  the  joyous  moon  ;  " 

or  these,  of  the  comparative  lightness  of  the  summer 

night: 

' '  A  faint,  erroneous  ray, 
Glanced  from  the  imperfect  surfaces  of  things, 
Flings  half  an  image  on  the  straining  eye." 

In  a  letter  to  Stonehewer  (June  29,  1760),  Gray  com- 
ments thus  upon  a  passage  from  Ossian: 

"  '  Ghosts  ride  on  the  tempest  to-night: 

Sweet  is  their  voice  between  the  gusts  of  wind: 
Their  songs  a7-e  of  other  worlds.' 

Did  you  never  observe  {while  rocking  winds  are  piping 
loud)  that  pause,  as  the  gust  is  re-collecting  itself,  and 
rising  upon  the  ear  in  a  shrill  and  plaintive  note,  like 
the  soul  of  an  ^olian  harp?  I  do  assure  you,  there 
is  nothing  in  the  world  so  like  the  voice  of  a  spirit. 
Thomson  had  an  ear  sometimes:  he  was  not  deaf  to 
this,  and  has  described  it  gloriously,  but  given  it 
another,  different  turn,  and  of  more  horror.     I  cannot 

*  Shakspere's    "broom   groves  whose  shade  the  dismist  bachelor 
loves  ; " 

Fletcher's 

"  Fountain  heads  and  pathless  groves, 

Places  which  pale  passion  loves," 
and  his 

"  Moonlight  walks  when  all  the  fowls 
Are  safely  housed,  save  bats  and  owls." 


ii8  <iA  History  of  English  T^pmanticism. 

repeat  the  lines:  it  is  in  his  'Winter.'"  The  lines 
that  Gray  had  in  mind  were  probably  these  (191-94): 

"  Then,  too,  they  say,  through  all  the  burdened  air, 
Long  groans  are  heard,  shrill  sounds  and  distant  sighs 
That,  uttered  by  the  demon  of  the  night, 
Warn  the  devoted  wretch  of  woe  and  death." 

Thomson  appears  to  have  been  a  sweet-tempered, 
indolent  man,  constant  in  friendship  and  much  loved 
by  his  friends.  He  had  a  little  house  and  grounds 
in  Kew  Lane  where  he  used  to  compose  poetry  on 
autumn  nights  and  loved  to  listen  to  the  nightingales 
in  Richmond  Garden;  and  where,  sang  Collins,  in  his 
ode  on  the  poet's  death  (1748), 

"  Remembrance  oft  shall  haunt  the  shore, 

When  Thames  in  summer  wreaths  is  drest. 
And  oft  suspend  the  dashing  oar 
To  bid  his  gentle  spirit  rest." 

Collins  had  been  attracted  to  Richmond  by  Thomson's 
residence  there,  and  forsook  the  neighborhood  after 
his  friend's  death. 

Joseph  Warton,  in  his  "Essay  on  Pope"  (1756), 
testified  that  "The  Seasons"  had  been  "very  instru- 
mental iu  diffusing  a  taste  for  the  beauties  of  nature 
and  landscape."  One  evidence  of  this  diffused  taste 
was  the  rise  of  the  new  or  natural  school  of  landscape 
gardening.  This  was  a  purely  English  art,  and  Gray, 
writing  in  1763,*  says  "It  is  not  forty  years  since  the 
art  was  born  among  us;  and  it  is  sure  that  there  was 
nothing  in  Europe  like  it " :  he  adds  that  "  our  skill  in 
gardening   and    laying    out   grounds"    is    "the    only 

*  Letter  to  Howe,  September  10. 


The  Landscape  'Poets.  1 1 9 

taste  we  can  call  our  own,  the  only  proof  of  our 
original  talent  in  matter  of  pleasure."  "  Neither 
Italy  nor  France  have  ever  had  the  least  notion  of  it, 
nor  yet  do  at  all  comprehend  it,  when  they  see  it."* 
Gray's  "not  forty  years"  carries  us  back  with  suffi- 
cient precision  to  the  date  of  "The  Seasons"  (1726- 
30),  and  it  is  not  perhaps  giving  undue  credit  to 
Thomson,  to  acknowledge  him  as,  in  a  great  measure, 
the  father  of  the  national  school  of  landscape  garden- 
ing. That  this  has  always  been  recognized  upon  the 
Continent  as  an  art  of  English  invention,  is  evidenced 
by  the  names  Englische  Garten,  jardin  Anglais,  still 
given  in  Germany  and  France  to  pleasure  grounds 
laid  out  in  the  natural  taste,  f  Schopenhauer  gives 
the  philosophy  of  the  opposing  styles  as  follows: 
"  The  great  distinction  between  the  English  and  the 
old  French  garden  rests,  in  the  last  analysis,  upon 
this,  viz.,  that  the  former  are  laid  out  in  the  object- 

*  Letter  to  Howe,  November,  1763, 

t  Alicia  Amherst  ("  History  of  Gardening  in  England,"  1896,  p. 
283)  mentions  a  French  and  an  Italian  work,  entitled  respectively 
"  Plan  de  Jardins  dans  le  gout  Anglais,"  Copenhagen,  1798;  and 
"Del  Arte  dei  Giardini  Inglesi,"  Milan,  1801.  "This  passion  for 
the  imitation  of  nature,"  says  the  same  authority,  "  was  part  of  the 
general  reaction  which  was  taking  place,  not  only  in  gardening  but 
in  the  world  of  literature  and  of  fashion.  The  extremely  artificial 
French  taste  had  long  taken  the  lead  in  civilized  Europe,  and  now 
there  was  an  attempt  to  shake  off  the  shackles  of  its  exaggerated 
formalism.  The  poets  of  the  age  were  also  pioneers  of  this  school  of 
nature.  Dyer,  in  his  poem  of  '  Grongar  Hill,'  and  Thomson,  in  his. 
'  Seasons,'  called  up  pictures  which  the  gardeners  and  architects  of 
the  day  strove  to  imitate."  See  in  this  work,  for  good  examples 
of  the  formal  garden,  the  plan  of  Belton  House,  Lincoln,  p.  245;  of 
Brome  Hall,  Suffolk  ;  of  the  orangery  and  canal  at  Euston,  p.  201  ; 
and  the  scroll  work  patterns  of  turf  and  parterres  on  pp.  217-18. 


I20  iA  History  of  English  '^Romanticism. 

ive,  the  latter  in  the  subjective  sense,  that  is  to  say, 
in  the  former  the  will  of  Nature,  as  it  manifests 
{objektivirt)  itself  in  tree,  mountain,  and  water,  is 
brought  to  the  purest  possible  expression  of  its  ideas, 
/.  ^.,  of  its  own  being.  In  the  French  gardens,  on  the 
other  hand,  there  is  reflected  only  the  will  of  the 
owner  who  has  subdued  Nature,  so  that,  instead  of 
her  own  ideas,  she  wears  as  tokens  of  her  slavery, 
the  forms  which  he  has  forced  upon  her — clipped 
hedges,  trees  cut  into  all  manner  of  shapes,  straight 
alleys,  arched  walks,  etc." 

It  would  be  unfair  to  hold  the  false  taste  of  Pope's 
generation  responsible  for  that  formal  style  of  garden- 
ing which  prevailed  when  "The  Seasons  "  was  written. 
The  old-fashioned  Italian  or  French  or  Dutch  garden — 
as  it  was  variously  called — antedated  the  Augustan  era, 
which  simply  inherited  it  from  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. In  Bacon's  essay  on  gardens,  as  well  as  in  the 
essays  on  the  same  subject  by  Cowley  and  Sir  William 
Temple,  the  ideal  pleasure  ground  is  very  much  like  that 
which  Le  Notre  realized  so  brilliantly  at  Versailles.* 
Addison,  in  fact,  in  the  Spectator  (No.  414)  and  Pope 
himself  in  the  Guardian  (No.  173)  ridiculed  the 
excesses  of  the  reigning  mode,  and  Pope  attacked 
them  again  in  his  description  of  Timon's  Villa  in  the 
'^'  Epistle  to  the  Earl  of  Burlington  "  (1731),  which  was 
thought  to  be  meant  for  Canons,  the  seat  of  the  Duke 
of  Chandos. 

*In  Temple's  gardens  at  Moor  Park,  Hertfordshire,  e.  g.,  there 
were  terraces  covered  with  lead.  Charles  II.  imported  some  of  Le 
Notre's  pupils  and  assistants,  who  laid  out  the  grounds  at  Hampton 
Court  in  the  French  taste.  The  maze  at  Hampton  Court  still  existed 
in  Walpole's  time  (1770). 


The  Landscape  Toets.  121 

*'  His  gardens  next  your  admiration  call, 
On  every  side  you  look,  behold  the  wall ! 
No  pleasing  intricacies  intervene, 
No  artful  wildness  to  perplex  the  scene  ; 
Grove  nods  at  grove,  each  alley  has  a  brother, 
And  half  the  platform  just  reflects  the  other. 
The  sufl'ering  eye  inverted  nature  sees. 
Trees  cut  to  statues,  statues  thick  as  trees  ; 
With  here  a  fountain,  never  to  be  played  ; 
And  there  a  summer  house,  that  knows  no  shade  ; 
Here  Amphitrite  sails  through  myrtle  bowers  ; 
There  gladiators  fight,  or  die  in  flowers  ; 
Unwatered  see  the  drooping  sea-horse  mourn, 
And  swallows  roost  in  Nilus'  dusty  urn." 

Still  the  criticism  is  not  merely  fanciful  which  dis- 
covers an  analogy  between  the  French  garden,  with 
its  trim  regularity  and  artificial  smoothness,  and  the 
couplets  which  Pope  wrote:  just  such  an  analogy  as 
exists  between  the  whole  classical  school  of  poetry  and 
the  Italian  architecture  copied  from  Palladio  and  in- 
troduced in  England  by  Inigo  Jones  and  Christopher 
Wren.  Grounds  were  laid  out  in  rectangular  plots, 
bordered  by  straight  alleys,  sometimes  paved  with 
vari-colored  sand,  and  edged  with  formal  hedges  of 
box  and  holly.  The  turf  was  inlaid  with  parterres  cut 
in  geometric  shapes  and  set,  at  even  distances,  with 
yew  trees  clipped  into  cubes,  cones,  pyramids,  spheres, 
sometimes  into  figures  of  giants,  birds,  animals,  and 
ships — called  "topiary  work"  {opus  topiariuni).  Ter- 
races, fountains,  bowling-greens  (Fr.  boulingrin) 
statues,  arcades,  quincunxes,  espaliers,  and  artificial 
mazes  or  labyrinths  loaded  the  scene.  The  whole  was 
inclosed  by  a  wall,  which  shut  the  garden  off  from  the 
surrounding  country. 


12  2  i/1  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

"When  a  Frenchman  reads  of  the  Garden  of  Eden," 
says  Horace  Walpole,  in  his  essay  "  On  Modern 
Gardening"  (written  in  1770.  published  in  1785), 
"I  do  not  doubt  but  he  concludes  it  was  something 
approaching  to  that  of  Versailles,  with  clipped  hedges, 
berceaiix  and  trellis  work.  .  .  The  measured  walk, 
the  quincunx  and  the  etoile  imposed  their  unsatisfying 
sameness  on  every  royal  and  noble  garden.  .  .  Many 
French  groves  seem  green  chests  set  upon  poles.  .  . 
In  the  garden  of  Marshal  de  Biron  at  Paris,  consisting 
of  fourteen  acres,  every  walk  is  buttoned  on  each  side 
by  lines  of  flower-pots,  which  succeed  in  their  seasons. 
When  I  saw  it,  there  were  nine  thousand  pots  of  asters, 
or  la  retne  Marguerite.  .  .  At  Lady  Orford's,  at 
Piddletown,  in  Dorsetshire,  there  was,  when  my 
brother  married,  a  double  enclosure  of  thirteen  gar- 
dens, each  I  suppose  not  much  above  a  hundred  yards 
square,  with  an  enfilade  of  correspondent  gates;  and 
before  you  arrived  at  these,  you  passed  a  narrow  gut 
between  two  stone  terraces  that  rose  above  your  head, 
and  which  were  crowned  by  a  line  of  pyramidal  yews. 
A  bowling  green  was  all  the  lawn  admitted  in  those 
times:  a  circular  lake  the  extent  of  magnificence."* 

Walpole  names  Theobalds  and  Nonsuch  as  famous 
examples  of  the  old  formal  style  of  garden;  Stour- 
head,  Hagley,  and  Stowe — the  country  seat  of  Lyttel- 
ton's  brother-in-law.  Lord  Cobham — of  the  new.  He 
says  that  mottoes  and  coats  of  arms  were  sometimes 
cut  in  yew,  box,  and  holly.  He  refers  with  respect  to 
a   recent    work    by    the    Rev.    Thomas   Whately,    or 

*  It  is  worth  noticing  that  Batty  Langley,  the  abortive  restorer  of 
Gothic,  also  recommended  the  natural  style  of  landscape  gardening 
as  early  as  1728  in  his  "  New  Principles  of  Gardening." 


The  Landscape  Toets.  123 

Wheatley,  "Observations  on  Modern  Gardening," 
1770;  and  to  a  poem,  then  and  still  in  manuscript,  but 
passages  of  which  are  given  by  Amherst,*  entitled 
"The  Rise  and  Progress  of  the  Present  Taste  in  Plant- 
ing Parks,  Pleasure  Grounds,  Gardens,  etc.  In  a 
poetic  epistle  to  Lord  Viscount  Irwin,"  1767. 

Gray's  friend  and  editor,  the  Rev.  William  Mason, 
in  his  poem  "The  English  Garden,"  1757,  speaks  of 
the  French  garden  as  already  a  thing  of  the  past. 

"  O  how  unlike  the  scene  my  fancy  forms, 

Did  Folly,  heretofore,  with  Wealth  conspire 

To  plant  that  formal,  dull  disjointed  scene 

Which  once  was  called  a  garden  !     Britain  still 

Bears  on  her  breast  full  many  a  hideous  wound 

Given  by  the  cruel  pair,  when,  borrowing  aid 

From  geometric  skill,  they  vainly  strove 

By  line,  by  plummet  and  unfeeling  shears 

To  form  with  verdure  what  the  builder  formed 

With  stone.    .    . 

Hence  the  sidelong  walls 

Of  shaven  yew  ;  the  holly's  prickly  arms 

Trimmed  into  high  arcades  ;  the  tonsile  box, 

Wove  in  mosaic  mode  of  many  a  curl 

Around  the  figured  carpet  of  the  lawn.    .    . 

The  terrace  mound  uplifted  ;  the  long  line 

Deep  delved  of  flat  canal."  f 

But  now,  continues  the  poet.  Taste  "exalts  her  voice  " 

and 

"  At  the  awful  sound 
The  terrace  sinks  spontaneous  ;  on  the  green, 
Broidered  with  crisped  knots,  the  tonsile  yews 
Wither  and  fall ;  the  fountain  dares  no  more 
To  fling  its  wasted  crystal  through  the  sky, 
But  pours  salubrious  o'er  the  parched  lawn." 

*  "  History  of  Gardening  in  England." 
f  I.  384—404. 


124  <^  History  of  English  l^omanticism. 

The  new  school  had  the  intolerance  of  reformers. 
The  ruthless  Capability  Brown  and  his  myrmidons 
laid  waste  many  a  prim  but  lovely  old  garden,  with 
its  avenues,  terraces,  and  sun  dials,  the  loss  of  which 
is  deeply  deplored,  now  that  the  Queen  Anne  revival 
has  taught  us  to  relish  the  rococo  beauties  which 
Brown's  imitation  landscapes  displaced. 

We  may  pause  for  a  little  upon  this  "English 
Garden  "  of  Mason's,  as  an  example  of  that  brood  of 
didactic  blank-verse  poems,  begotten  of  Philips' 
"  Cyder  "  and  Thomson's  "  Seasons,"  which  includes 
Mallet's  "Excursion"  (1728),  Somerville's  "Chase" 
(1734),  Akenside's  "  Pleasures  of  Imagination  "  (1742- 
44),  Armstrong's  "Art  of  Preserving  Health  "  (1744),* 
Dyer's  "  Fleece "  (1757)  and  Grainger's  "  Sugar 
Cane  "(1764).  Mason's  blank  verse,  like  Mallet's,  is 
closely  imitative  of  Thomson's,  and  the  influence  of 
Thomson's  inflated  diction  is  here  seen  at  its  worst. 
The  whole  poem  is  an  object  lesson  on  the  absurdity  of 
didactic  poetry.  Especially  harrowing  are  the  author's 
struggles  to  be  poetic  while  describing  the  various  kinds 
of  fences  designed  to  keep  sheep  out  of  his  inclosures. 

"  Ingrateful  sure, 
When  such  the  theme,  becomes  the  poet's  task  : 
Yet  must  he  try  by  modulation  meet 
Of  varied  cadence  and  selected  phrase 
Exact  yet  free,  without  inflation  bold, 
To  dignify  that  theme." 

Accordingly  he  dignifies  his  theme  by  speaking  of  a 
net  as  the  "  sportsman's  hempen  toils,"  and  of  a  gun  as 

*■   ^  "  —fell  tube 

Whose  iron  entrails  hide  the  sulphurous  blast, 
Satanic  engine  ! " 


The  Landscape  "Toets.  125 

When   he  names  an  ice-house,  it   is   under  a  form  of 
conundrum: 

"  — the  structure  rude  where  Winter  pounds, 
In  conic  pit  his  congelations  hoar, 
That  Summer  may  his  tepid  beverage  cool 
With  the  chill  luxury." 

This  species  of  verbiage  is  the  earmark  of  all 
eighteenth-century  poetry  and  poets;  not  only  of  those 
who  used  the  classic  couplet,  but  equally  of  the 
romanticizing  group  who  adopted  blank  verse.  The 
best  of  them  are  not  free  from  it,  not  even  Gray,  not 
even  Collins;  and  it  pervades  Wordsworth's  earliest 
.^verses,  his  *' Descriptive  Sketches"  and  "Evening 
Walk  "  published  in  1793.  But  perhaps  the  very  worst 
instance  of  it  is  in  Dr.  Armstrong's  "Economy  of 
Love,"  where  the  ludicrous  contrast  between  the 
impropriety  of  the  subject  and  the  solemn  pomp  of  the 
diction  amounts  almost  to  bo2(ffe. 

In  emulation  of  "The  Seasons"  Mason  introduced  a 
sentimental  love  story — Alcander  and  Nerina — into  his 
third  book.  He  informs  his  readers  (book  II.  34-78) 
that,  in  the  reaction  against  straight  alleys,  many 
gardeners  had  gone  to  an  extreme  in  the  use  of  zigzag 
meanders;  and  he  recommends  them  to  follow  the 
natural  curves  of  the  footpaths  which  the  milkmaid 
wears  across  the  pastures  "from  stile  to  stile,"  or 
which 

— "  the  scudding  hare 
Draws  to  her  dew-sprent  seat  o'er  thymy  heaths." 

The    prose  commentary    on  Mason's  poem,    by  W. 
Burgh,*  asserts   that  the  formal   style  of  garden  had 


*  << 


The  Works  of  William  Mason,"  in  4  vols.,  London,  1811. 


126  zA  History  of  English  l^manticism. 

begun  to  give  way  about  the  commencement  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  though  the  new  fashion  had  but 
very  lately  attained  to  its  perfection.  Mason  mentions 
Pope  as  a  champion  of  the  true  taste,*  but  the  descrip- 
tions of  his  famous  villa  at  Twickenham,  with  its 
grotto,  thickets,  and  artificial  mounds,  hardly  suggest 
to  the  modern  reader  a  very  successful  attempt  to 
reproduce  nature.     To  be  sure.  Pope   had   only  five 

*  See  Pope's  paper  in  the  Guardian  (173)  for  some  rather  elaborate 
foolery  about  topiary  work.  "  All  art,"  he  maintains,  "consists  in 
the  imitation  and  study  of  nature."  "We  seem  to  make  it  our 
study  to  recede  from  nature,  not  only  in  the  various  tonsure  of  greens 
into  the  most  regular  and  formal  shapes,  but,"  etc.,  etc.  Addison, 
too,  Spectator  414,  June  25,  1712,  upholds  "  the  rough,  careless 
strokes  of  nature  "  against  "  the  nice  touches  and  embellishments  of 
art,"  and  complains  that  "our  British  gardeners,  instead  of  humor- 
ing nature,  love  to  deviate  from  it  as  much  as  possible.  Our  trees 
rise  in  cones,  globes  and  pyramids.  We  see  the  marks  of  the  scissors 
upon  every  plant  and  bush.  I  do  not  know  whether  I  am  singular  in 
my  opinion,  but  for  my  own  part,  I  would  rather  look  upon  a  tree  in 
all  its  luxuriancy  and  diffusion  of  boughs  and  branches,  than  when 
it  is  thus  cut  and  trimmed  into  a  mathematical  figure."  See  also 
Spectator,  477,  for  a  pretty  scheme  of  a  garden  laid  out  with 
"  the  beautiful  wildness  of  nature."  Gilbert  West's  Spenserian 
poem  "  Education,"  1751  (see  ante,  p.  90),  contains  an  attack,  in  six 
stanzas,  upon  the  geometric  garden,  from  which  I  give  a  single 
stanza. 

' '  Alse  other  wonders  of  the  sportive  shears. 
Fair  nature  mis-adorning,  there  were  found  : 
Globes,  spiral  columns,  pyramids  and  piers. 
With  sprouting  urns  and  budding  statues  crowned  ; 
And  horizontal  dials  on  the  ground, 
In  living  box  by  cunning  artists  traced  ; 
And  gallies  trim,  on  no  long  voyage  bound. 
But  by  their  roots  there  ever  anchored  fast, 
All  were  their  bellying  sails  out-spread  to  every  blast." 


The  Landscape  Toets.  127 

acres  to  experiment  with,  and  that  parklike  scenery 
which  distinguishes  the  English  landscape  garden 
requires  a  good  deal  of  room.  The  art  is  the  natural 
growth  of  a  country  where  primogeniture  has  kept 
large  estates  in  the  hands  of  the  nobility  and  landed 
gentry,  and  in  which  a  passion  for  sport  has  kept  the 
nobility  and  gentry  in  the  country  a  great  share  of  the 
year.  Even  Shenstone — whose  place  is  commended  by 
Mason — Shenstone  at  the  Leasowes,  with  his  three 
hundred  acres,  felt  his  little  pleasance  rather  awkwardly 
dwarfed  by  the  neighborhood  of  Lyttelton's  big  park 
at  Hagley. 

The  general  principle  of  the  new  or  English  school 
was  to  imitate  nature;  to  let  trees  keep  their  own 
shapes,  to  substitute  winding  walks  for  straight  alleys, 
and  natural  waterfalls  or  rapids  iov  Jets  d'eau  in  marble 
basins.  The  plan  upon  which  Shenstone  worked  is 
explained  in  his  "Unconnected  Thoughts  on  Garden- 
ing "  *  (1764),  a  few  sentences  from  which  will  indicate 
the  direction  of  the  reform:  "Landscape  should  con- 
tain variety  enough  to  form  a  picture  upon  canvas; 
and  this  is  no  bad  test,  as  I  think  the  landscape  painter 
is  the  gardener's  best  designer.  The  eye  requires  a 
sort  of  balance  here;  but  not  so  as  to  encroach  upon 
probable  nature.  A  wood  or  hill  may  balance  a  house 
or  obelisk;  for  exactness  would  be  displeasing.  .  . 
It  is  not  easy  to  account  for  the  fondness  of  former 
times  for  straight-lined  avenues  to  their  houses; 
straight-lined  walks  through  their  woods;  and,  in 
short,  every  kind  of  straight  line,  where  the  foot  has 
to  travel  over  what  the   eye   has  done  before.   .   .   To 

*  "  Essays  on  Men  and  Manners,"  Shenstone's  Works,  Vol,  II., 
Dodsley's  edition. 


128  <iA  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

stand  still  and  survey  such  avenues  may  afford  some 
slender  satisfaction,  through  the  change  derived  from 
perspective;  but  to  move  on  continually  and  find  no 
change  of  scene  in  the  least  attendant  on  our  change 
of  place,  must  give  actual  pain  to  a  person  of  taste.  .  . 
I  conceived  some  idea  of  the  sensation  he  must  feel 
from  walking   but   a    few  minutes,  immured  between 

Lord  D 's  high  shorn  yew  hedges,  which  run  exactly 

parallel  at  the  distance  of  about  ten  feet,  and  are 
contrived  perfectly  to  exclude  all  kind  of  objects 
whatsoever.  .  .  The  side  trees  in  vistas  should  be  so 
circumstanced  as  to  afford  a  probability  that  they  grew 
by  nature.  .  .  The  shape  of  ground,  the  disposition  of 
trees  and  the  figure  of  water  must  be  sacred  to  nature; 
and  no  forms  must  be  allowed  that  make  a  discovery 
of  art.  .  .  The  taste  of  the  citizen  and  of  the  mere 
peasant  are  in  all  respects  the  same:  the  former  gilds 
his  balls,  paints  his  stonework  and  statues  white,  plants 
his  trees  in  lines  or  circles,  cuts  his  yew-trees  four- 
square or  conic,  or  gives  them  what  he  can  of  the 
resemblance  of  birds  or  bears  or  men:  squirts  up  his 
rivulets  in  Jets  d'eatij  in  short,  admires  no  part  of 
nature  but  her  ductility;  exhibits  everything  that  is 
glaring,  that  implies  expense,  or  that  effects  a  surprise 
because  it  is  unnatural.  The  peasant  is  his  admirer.  .  . 
Water  should  ever  appear  as  an  irregular  lake  or  wind- 
ing stream.  .  .  Hedges,  appearing  as  such,  are  univer- 
sally bad.     They  discover  art  in  nature's  province." 

There  is  surely  a  correspondence  between  this  new 
taste  for  picturesque  gardening  which  preferred  free- 
dom, variety,  irregularity,  and  naturalness  to  rule, 
monotony,  uniformity,  and  artifice,  and  that  new  taste 
in    literature  which  discarded  the  couplet   for   blank 


The  Landscape  Toets.  129 

verse,  or  for  various  stanza  forms,  which  left  the 
world  of  society  for  the  solitudes  of  nature,  and  ulti- 
mately went,  in  search  of  fresh  stimulus,  to  the 
remains  of  the  Gothic  ages  and  the  rude  fragments  of 
Norse  and  Celtic  antiquity. 

Both  Walpole  and  Mason  speak  of  William  Kent, 
the  architect  and  landscape  painter,  as  influential  in 
introducing  a  purer  taste  in  the  gardener's  art.  Kent 
was  a  friend  of  Pope  and  a.  protege  oi  Lord  Burlington 
to  whom  Pope  inscribed  his  "Epistle  on  the  Use  of 
Riches,"  already  quoted  (see  a?ite  p.  121),  and  who 
gave  Kent  a  home  at  his  country  house.  Kent  is  said 
to  have  acknowledged  that  he  caught  his  taste  in  gar- 
dening from  the  descriptive  passages  in  Spenser, 
whose  poems  he  illustrated.  Walpole  and  Mason  also 
unite  in  contrasting  with  the  artificial  gardening  of 
Milton's  time  the  picture  of  Eden  in  '*  Paradise 
Lost:" 

' ' — where  not  nice  art  in  curious  knots, 
But  nature  boon  poured  forth  on  hill  and  dale 
Flowers  worthy  o£  Paradise;  while  all  around 
Umbrageous  grots,  and  caves  of  cool  recess, 
And  murmuring  waters,  down  the  slope  dispersed, 
Or  held  by  fringed  banks  in  crystal  lakes. 
Compose  a  rural  seat  of  various  hue." 

But  it  is  worth  noting  that  in  "  L'Allegro  "  "retired 

leisure,"  takes  his  pleasure  in   ^^  trim  gardens,"  while 

in  Collins, 

"  Ease  and  health  retire 
To  breezy  lawn  or  forest  deep." 

Walpole  says  that  Kent's  "ruling  principle  was  that 
nature  abhors  a  straight  line."  Kent  "leaped  the 
fence  and  saw  that  all  nature  was  a  garden.     He  felt 


130  <iA  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

the  delicious  contrast  of  hill  and  valley,  changing 
imperceptibly  into  each  other  .  .  .  and  remarked 
how  loose  groves  crowned  an  easy  eminence  with 
happy  ornament.  .  .  The  great  principles  on  which 
he  worked  were  perspective  and  light  and  shade.  .  . 
But  of  all  the  beauties  he  added  to  the  face  of  this 
beautiful  country,  none  surpassed  his  management  of 
water.  Adieu  to  canals,  circular  basins,  and  cascades 
tumbling  down  marble  steps.  .  .  The  gentle  stream 
was  taught  to  serpentine  seemingly  at  its  pleasure."* 
The  treatment  of  the  garden  as  a  part  of  the  landscape 
in  general  was  commonly  accomplished  by  the  removal 
of  walls,  hedges,  and  other  inclosures,  and  the  substi- 
tution of  the  ha-ha  or  sunken  fence.  It  is  odd  that 
Walpole,  though  he  speaks  of  Capability  Brown, 
makes  no  mention  of  the  Leasowes,  whose  proprietor, 
William  Shenstone,  the  author  of  "The  School- 
mistress," is  one  of  the  most  interesting  of  amateur 
gardeners.  "  England,"  says  Hugh  Miller,  "has  pro- 
duced many  greater  poets  than  Shenstone,  but  she 
.never  produced  a  greater  landscape  gardener." 

At  Oxford,  Shenstone  had  signalized  his  natural 
tastes  by  wearing  his  own  hair  instead  of  the  wig  then 
(1732)  universally  the  fashion,  f  On  coming  of  age, 
he  inherited  a  Shropshire  farm,  called  the  Leasowes, 
in  the  parish  of  Hales  Owen  and  an  annuity  of  some 
three  hundred  pounds.  He  was  of  an  indolent,  retir- 
ing, and  somewhat  melancholy  temperament;  and, 
instead  of  pursuing  a  professional  career,  he  settled 
down    upon    his    property  and,  about   the  year  1745, 

*"On  Modern  Gardening,"  Works  of  the  Earl  of  Orford, 
London,  1798,  Vol.  II. 

f  Graves,  "  Recollections  of  Shenstone,"  1788. 


The  Landscape  T^oets.  131 

began  to  turn  it  into  2,  ferme  ornce.  There  he  wooed 
the  rustic  muse  in  elegy,  ode,  and  pastoral  ballad, 
sounding  upon  the  vocal  reed  the  beauties  of  simplicity 
and  the  vanity  of  ambition,  and  mingling  with  these 
strains  complaints  of  Delia's  cruelty  and  of  the  short- 
ness of  his  own  purse,  which  hampered  him  seriously 
in  his  gardening  designs.  Mr.  Saintsbury  has  de- 
scribed Shenstone  as  a  master  of  "  the  artificial-natural 
style  in  poetry."*  His  pastoral  insipidities  about 
pipes  and  crooks  and  kids,  Damon  and  Delia,  Strephon 
and  Chloe,  excited  the  scorn  of  Dr.  Johnson,  who  was 
also  at  no  pains  to  conceal  his  contempt  for  the  poet's 
horticultural  pursuits.  "Whether  to  plant  a  walk  in 
undulating  curves  and  to  place  a  bench  at  every  turn 
where  there  is  an  object  to  catch  the  view;  to  make 
water  run  where  it  will  be  heard,  and  to  stagnate 
where  it  will  be  seen;  to  leave  intervals  where  the  eye 
will  be  pleased,  and  to  thicken  the  plantation  where 
there  is  something  to  be  hidden,  demands  any  great 
powers  of  mind,  I  will  not  enquire."  The  doctor 
reports  that  Lyttelton  was  jealous  of  the  fame  which 
the  Leasowes  soon  acquired,  and  that  when  visitors  to 
Hagley  asked  to  see  Shenstone's  place,  their  host 
would  adroitly  conduct  them  to  inconvenient  points 
of  view — introducing  them,  e.  g.,  at  the  wrong  end  of 
a  walk,  so  as  to  detect  a  deception  in  perspective, 
"  injuries  of  which  Shenstone  would  heavily  com- 
plain." f  Graves,  however,  denies  that  any  rivalry 
was  in  question  between  the  great  domain  of  Hagley 
and  the  poet's  little  estate.  "The  truth  of  the  case," 
he  writes,  "  was  that  the  Lyttelton  family  went  so  fre- 

*"  Ward's  English  Poets,"  Vol.  III.  271. 
t  "Life  of  Shenstone." 


132  <iA  History  of  English  l^manticism. 

quently  with  their  company  to  the  Leasowes,  that  they 
were  unwilling  to  break  in  upon  Mr.  Shenstone's  retire- 
ment on  every  occasion,  and  therefore  often  went  to 
the  principal  points  of  view,  without  waiting  for  any- 
one to  conduct  them  regularly  through  the  whole 
walks.  Of  this  Mr.  Shenstone  would  sometimes 
peevishly  complain." 

Shenstone  describes  in  his  "Thoughts  on  Garden- 
ing," several  artifices  that  he  put  in  practice  for 
increasing  the  apparent  distance  of  objects,  or  for 
lengthening  the  perspective  of  an  avenue  by  widening 
it  in  the  foreground  and  planting  it  there  with  dark- 
foliaged  trees,  like  yews  and  firs,  "  then  with  trees 
more  and  more  fady,  till  they  end  in  the  almond- 
willow  or  silver  osier."  To  have  Lord  Lyttleton  bring 
in  a  party  at  the  small,  or  willow  end  of  such  a  walk, 
and  thereby  spoil  the  whole  trick,  must  indeed  have 
been  provoking.  Johnson  asserts  that  Shenstone's 
house  was  ruinous  and  that  "  nothing  raised  his  indig- 
nation more  than  to  ask  if  there  were  any  fishes  in  his 
water."  "In  time,"  continues  the  doctor,  "his  ex- 
penses brought  clamors  about  him  that  overpowered 
the  lamb's  bleat  and  the  linnet's  song;  and  his  groves 
were  haunted  by  beings  very  different  from  fawns  and 
fairies;  "  to  wit,  bailiffs;  but  Graves  denies  this. 

The  fame  of  the  Leasowes  attracted  visitors  from 
all  parts  of  the  country — literary  men  like  Spence, 
Home,  and  Dodsley:  picturesque  tourists,  who  came 
out  of  curiosity;  and  titled  persons,  who  came,  or 
sent  their  gardeners,  to  obtain  hints  for  laying  out 
their  own  grounds.  Lyttelton  brought  William  Pitt, 
who  was  so  much  interested  that  he  offered  to  con- 
tribute two  hundred    pounds    toward    improvements, 


The  Landscape  Toets.  133 

an  offer  that  Shenstone,  however,  declined.  Pitt  had 
himself  some  skill  in  landscape  gardening,  which  he 
exercised  at  Enfield  Chase  and  afterward  at  Hayes.* 
Thomson,  who  was  Lyttelton's  guest  at  Hagley  every 
summer  during  the  last  three  or  four  years  of  his  life, 
was  naturally  familiar  with  the  Leasowes.  There  are 
many  references  to  the  "sweet  descriptive  bard,"  in 
Shenstone's  poems  f  and  a  seat  was  inscribed  to  his 
memory  in  a  part  of  the  grounds  known  as  Vergil's 
Grove,  ''This  seat,"  says  Dodsley,  "is  placed  upon  a 
steep  bank  on  the  edge  of  the  valley,  from  which  the 
eye  is  here  drawn  down  into  the  flat  below  by  the 
light  that  glimmers  in  front  and  by  the  sound  of  vari- 
ous cascades,  by  which  the  winding  stream  is  agreeably 
broken.  Opposite  to  this  seat  the  ground  rises  again 
in  an  easy  concave  to  a  kind  of  dripping  fountain, 
where  a  small  rill  trickles  down  a  rude  niche  of  rock 
work  through  fern,  liverwort,  and  aquatic  weeds.  .  . 
The  whole  scene  is  opaque  and  gloomy."  J 

English   landscape   gardening   is  a  noble   art.     Its 

*See  ante,  p.  90,  for  his  visits  to  Gilbert  West  at  Wickham. 

f  See  especially  "  A  Pastoral  Ode,"  and  "  Verses  Written  toward 
the  Close  of  the  Year  1748." 

:|:  "  A  Description  of  the  Leasowes  by  R.  Dodsley,"  Shenstone's 
Works,  Vol.  II.  pp.  287-320  (3d  ed.)  This  description  is  accom- 
panied with  a  map.  For  other  descriptions  consult  Graves'  "  Recol- 
lections," Hugh  Miller's  "  First  Impressions  of  England,"  and  Wm. 
Howitt's  "  Homes  of  the  Poets"  (1846),  Vol.  I.  pp.  258-63.  The 
last  gives  an  engraving  of  the  house  and  grounds.  Miller,  who  was 
at  Hagley — "  The  British  Tempe" — and  the  I^easowes  just  a  century 
after  Shenstone  began  to  embellish  his  paternal  acres,  says  that  the 
Leasowes  was  the  poet's  most  elaborate  poem,  "the  singularly 
ingenious  composition,  inscribed  on  an  English  hillside,  which  em- 
ployed for  twenty  long  years  the  taste  and  genius  of  Shenstone." 


134  «i^  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

principles  are  sound  and  of  perpetual  application. 
Yet  we  have  advanced  so  much  farther  in  the  passion 
for  nature  than  the  men  of  Shenstone's  day  that  we 
are  apt  to  be  impatient  of  the  degree  of  artifice  present 
in  even  the  most  skillful  counterfeit  of  the  natural 
landscape.  The  poet  no  longer  writes  odes  on  **  Rural 
Elegance,"  nor  sings 

"  The  transport,  most  allied  to  song, 

In  some  fair  valley's  peaceful  bound 
To  catch  soft  hints  from  Nature's  tongue, 

And  bid  Arcadia  bloom  around  ; 
Whether  we  fringe  the  sloping  hill, 

Or  smooth  below  the  verdant  mead  ; 
Whether  we  break  the  falling  rill, 

Or  through  meandering  mazes  lead, 
Or  in  the  horrid  brambles'  room 

Bid  careless  groups  of  roses  bloom  ; 
Or  let  some  sheltered  lake  serene 

Reflect  flowers,  woods  and  spires,  and  brighten  all  the 
scene." 

If  we  cannot  have  the  mountains,  the  primeval  for- 
est, or  the  shore  of  the  wild  sea,  we  can  at  least  have 
Thomson's  ''great  simple  country,"  subdued  to  man's 
use  but  not  to  his  pleasure.  The  modern  mood  pre- 
fers a  lane  to  a  winding  avenue,  and  an  old  orchard  or 
stony  pasture  to  a  lawn  decorated  with  coppices.  "I 
do  confess,"  says  Howitt,  "that  in  the  '  Leasowes '  I 
have  always  found  so  much  ado  about  nothing;  such  a 
parade  of  miniature  cascades,  lakes,  streams  conveyed 
hither  and  thither;  surprises  in  the  disposition  of 
woods  and  the  turn  of  walks  .  .  .  that  I  have  heartily 
wished  myself  out  upon  a  good  rough  heath." 

For   the    "artificial-natural"   was  a  trait  of   Shen- 


The  Landscape  Toets.  135 

stone's  gardening  no  less  than  of  his  poetry.  He 
closed  every  vista  and  emphasized  every  opening  in 
his  shubberies  and  every  spot  that  commanded  a  pros- 
spect  with  some  object  which  was  as  an  exclamation 
point  on  the  beauty  of  the  scene:  a  rustic  bench,  a 
root-house,  a  Gothic  alcove,  a  grotto,  a  hermitage,  a 
memorial  urn  or  obelisk  dedicated  to  Lyttelton,  Thom- 
son, Somerville,*  Dodsley,  or  some  other  friend.  He 
supplied  these  with  inscriptions  expressive  of  the  sen- 
timents appropriate  to  the  spot,  passages  from  Vergil, 
or  English  or  Latin  verses  of  his  own  composition. 
Walpole  says  that  Kent  went  so  far  in  his  imitation 
of  natural  scenery  as  to  plant  dead  trees  in  Kensing- 
ton Garden.  Walpole  himself  seems  to  approve  of  /^ 
such  devices  as  artificial  ruins,  "a  feigned  steeple  oi  a.  y* 
distant  church  or  an  unreal  bridge  to  disguise  the  ter-  ( 
mination  of  water."  Shenstone  was  not  above  these 
little  effects:  he  constructed  a  "  ruinated  priory"  and 
a  temple  of  Pan  out  of  rough,  unhewn  stone;  he  put  up 
a  statue  of  a  piping  faun,  and  another  of  the  Venus  dei  J 
Medici  beside  a  vase  of  gold  fishes. 

Some  of  Shenstone's  inscriptions  have  escaped  the 
tooth  of  time.  The  motto,  for  instance,  cut  upon  the 
urn  consecrated  to  the  memory  of  his  cousin,  Miss 
Dolman,  was  prefixed  by  Byron  to  his  "Elegy  upon 
Thyrza  " :  "  Heu  quanto  minus  est  cum  reliquis  versari 
quam  tui  meminisse!"  The  habit  of  inscription  pre- 
vailed down  to  the  time  of  Wordsworth,  who  composed 
a  number  for  the  grounds  of  Sir  George  Beaumont  at 

*  See  "  Lady  Luxborough's  Letters  to  Shenstone,"  1775,  for  a  long 
correspondence  about  an  urn  which  she  was  erecting  to  Somerville's 
memory.  She  was  a  sister  of  Bolingbroke,  had  a  seat  at  Barrels,  and 
exchanged  visits  with  Shenstone. 


136  't/1  History  of  English  T^omaniicism. 

Coleorton.  One  of  Akenside's  best  pieces  is  his 
"Inscription  for  a  Grotto,"  whicli  is  not  unworthy 
of  Landor.  Matthew  Green,  the  author  of  "The 
Spleen,"  wrote  a  poem  of  some  250  lines  upon  Queen 
Caroline's  celebrated  grotto  in  Richmond  Garden. 
"A  grotto,"  says  Johnson,  apropos  of  that  still  more 
celebrated  one  at  Pope's  Twickenham  villa,  "  is  not 
often  the  wish  or  pleasure  of  an  Englishman,  who  has 
more  frequent  need  to  solicit  than  exclude  the 
sun";  but  the  increasing  prominence  of  the  mossy 
cave  and  hermit's  cell,  both  in  descriptive  verse  and  in 
gardening,  was  symptomatic.  It  was  a  note  of  the 
coming  romanticism,  and  of  that  pensive,  elegiac  strain 
\  which  we  shall  encounter  in  the  work  of  Gray,  Collins, 
and  the  Wartons.  It  marked  the  withdrawal  of  the 
muse  from  the  world's  high  places  into  the  cool 
sequestered  vale  of  life.  All  through  the  literature  of 
the  mid-century,  the  high-strung  ear  may  catch  the  drip- 
drip  of  spring  water  down  the  rocky  walls  of  the  grot. 
At  Hagley,  halfway  up  the  hillside.  Miller  saw 
a  semi-octagonal  temple  dedicated  to  the  genius  of 
Thomson.  It  stood  in  a  grassy  hollow  which  com- 
manded a  vast,  open  prospect  and  was  a  favorite  rest- 
ing place  of  the  poet  of  "The  Seasons."  In  a  shady, 
secluded  ravine  he  found  a  white  pedestal,  topped  by 
an  urn  which  Lyttelton  had  inscribed  to  the  memory 
of  Shenstone.  This  contrast  of  situation  seemed  to 
the  tourist  emblematic.  Shenstone,  he  says,  was  an 
egotist,  and  his  recess,  true  to  his  character,  excludes 
the  distant  landscape.  Gray,  who  pronounced  "The 
Schoolmistress "  a  masterpiece  in  its  kind,  made  a 
rather  slighting  mention  of  its  author.*  "  I  have  read 
*  *'  Letter  to  Nichols,"  June  24,  1769. 


The  Landscape  Toets.  137 

an  8vo  volume  of  Shenstone's  letters;  poor  man!  he 
was  always  wishing  for  money,  for  fame  and  other  dis- 
tinctions; and  his  whole  philosophy  consisted  in  living, 
against  his  will,  in  retirement  and  in  a  place  which  his 
taste  had  adorned,  but  which  he  only  enjoyed  when 
people  of  note  came  to  see  and  commend  it,"  Gray 
unquestionably  profited  by  a  reading  of  Shenstone's 
''  Elegies,"  which  antedate  his  own  "Elegy  Written  in 
a  Country  Churchyard"  (1751).  He  adopted  Shen- 
stone's stanza,  which  Shenstone  had  borrowed  from 
the  love  elegies  of  a  now  forgotten  poet,  James  Ham- 
mond, equerry  to  Prince  Frederick  and  a  friend  of  Cob- 
ham,  Lyttelton,  and  Chesterfield.  *'Why  Hammond 
or  other  writers,"  says  Johnson,  "have  thought  the 
quatrain  of  ten  syllables  elegiac,  it  is  difficult  to  tell. 
The  character  of  the  elegy  is  gentleness  and  tenuity, 
but  this  stanza  has  been  pronounced  by  Dryden  .  .  . 
to  be  the  most  magnificent  of  all  the  measures  which 
our  language  affords."  * 

*Dryden's  "Annus  Mirabilis,"  Davenant's  "  Gondibert,"  and  Sir 
John  Davies'  "  Nosce  Teipsum  "  were  written  in  this  stanza,  but  the 
universal  currency  of  Gray's  poem  associated  it  for  many  years  almost 
exclusively  with  elegiac  poetry.  Slienstone's  collected  poems  were 
not  published  till  1764,  though  some  of  them  had  been  printed  in 
Dodsley's  "  Miscellanies."  Only  a  few  of  his  elegies  are  dated  in  the 
collected  editions  (Elegy  VIII,  1745  ;  XIX,  1743  ;  XXI,  1746),  but 
Graves  says  that  they  were  all  written  before  Gray's.  The  following 
lines  will  recall  to  every  reader  corresponding  passages  in  Gray's 
"  Churchyard  "  : 

"  O  foolish  muses,  that  with  zeal  aspire 

To  deck  the  cold  insensate  shrine  with  bays  ! 

"  When  the  free  spirit  quits  her  humble  frame 

To  tread  the  skies,  with  radiant  garlands  crowned  ; 


y 


u 


138  iA  History  of  English  'T^omanticism. 

Next  after  *'The  Schoolmistress,"  the  most  engag- 
ing of  Shenstone's  poems  is  his  "Pastoral  Ballad," 
written  in  1743  in  four  parts  and  in  a  tripping  ana- 
pestic  measure.  Familiar  to  most  readers  is  the 
stanza  beginning: 

' '  I  have  found  out  a  gift  for  my  fair, 
I  have  found  where  the  wood-pigeons  breed." 

Dr.    Johnson    acknowledged    the    prettiness   of    the 
conceit: 

"  So  sweetly  she  bade  me  adieu, 

I  thought  that  she  bade  me  return;  " 

and  he  used  to  quote  and  commend  the  well-known 
lines  **  Written  at  an  Inn  at  Henley: 

"  Whoe'er  has  travell'd  life's  dull  round, 
Where'er  his  stages  may  have  been, 
May  sigh  to  think  he  still  has  found 
The  warmest  welcome  at  an  inn." 

As  to  Shenstone's  blank  verse — of  which  there  is  not 
much — the    doctor    says:    "His   blank   verses,   those 

Say,  will  she  hear  the  distant  voice  of  Fame, 
Or  hearing,  fancy  sweetness  in  the  sound  ? " 

— El^gy  II. 

*'  I  saw  his  bier  ignobly  cross  the  plain." 

—Elegy  III. 

"  No  wild  ambition  fired  their  spotless  breast." 

—Elegy  XV. 

"  Through  the  dim  veil  of  evening's  dusky  shade 
Near  some  lone  fane  or  yew's  funereal  green,"  etc. 

—Elegy  IV. 

"  The  glimmering  twilight  and  the  doubtful  dawn 

Shall  see  your  step  to  these  sad  scenes  return, 

Constant  as  crystal  dews  impearl  the  lawn,"  etc. 

—Ibid, 


7 be  Landscape  Toets.  139 

that  can  read  them  may  probably  find  to  be  like  the 
blank  verses  of  his  neighbors."  Shenstone  encour- 
aged Percy  to  publish  his  "  Reliques. "  The  plans  for 
the  grounds  at  Abbotsford  were  somewhat  influenced 
by  Dodsley's  description  of  the  Leasowes,  which 
Scott  studied  with,  great  interest. 

In  1744  Mark  Akenside,  a  north  country  man  and 
educated  partly  in  Scotland,  published  his  '*  Pleasures 
of  Imagination,"  afterwards  rewritten  as  "The  Pleas- 
ures of  the  Imagination  "  and  spoiled  in  the  process. 
The  title  and  something  of  the  course  of  thought  in 
the  poem  were  taken  from  Addison's  series  of  papers 
on  the  subject  {Spectator,  Nos.  41 1-42 1).  Akenside 
was  a  man  of  learning  and  a  physician  of  distinction. 
His  poem,  printed  when  he  was  only  twenty-three, 
enjoyed  a  popularity  now  rather  hard  to  account  for. 
Gray  complained  of  its  obscurity  and  said  it  was  issued 
nine  years  too  early,  but  admitted  that  now  and  then 
it  rose  "  even  to  the  best,  particularly  in  description." 
Akenside  was  harsh,  formal,  and  dogmatic,  as  a  man. 
Smollett  caricatured  him  in  "  Peregrine  Pickle." 
Johnson  hated  his  Whig  principles  and  represents  him, 
when  settled  at  Northampton,  as  "having  deafened 
the  place  with  clamors  for  liberty."  *  He  furthermore 
disliked  the  class  of  poetry  to  which  Akenside's  work 
belonged,  and  he  told  Boswell  that  he  couldn't  read 
it.  Still  he  speaks  of  him  with  a  certain  cautious 
respect,  which  seems  rather  a  concession  to  con- 
temporary opinion  than  an  appreciation  of  the  critic's 
own.  He  even  acknowledges  that  Akenside  has 
"  fewer  artifices  of  disgust  than  most  of  his  brethren 
of  the  blank  song."  Lowell  says  that  the  very  title 
of  Akenside's  poem  pointed  "away  from  the  level 
*"  Life  of  Akenside." 


I40  e/f  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

highway  of  commonplace  to  mountain  paths  and  less 
domestic  prospects.  The  poem  was  stiff  and  unwill- 
ing, but  in  its  loins  lay  the  seed  of  nobler  births. 
Without  it,  the  'Lines  Written  at  Tintern  Abbey' 
might  never  have  been." 

One  cannot  read  "The  Pleasures  of  Imagina- 
tion" without  becoming  sensible  that  the  writer  was 
possessed  of  poetic  feeling,  and  feeling  of  a  kind  that 
we  generally  agree  to  call  romantic.  His  doctrine  at 
least,  if  not  his  practice,  was  in  harmony  with  the 
fresh  impulse  which  was  coming  into  English  poetry. 
Thus  he  celebrates  heaven-born  genius  and  the  in- 
spiration of  nature,  and  decries  "the  critic-verse" 
and  the  effort  to  scale  Parnassus  "by  dull  obedience." 
He  invokes  the  peculiar  muse  of  the  new  school: 

"  Indulgent  Fancy ^  from  the  fruitful  banks 
Of  Avon,  whence  thy  rosy  fingers  cull 
Fresh  flowers  and  dews  to  sprinkle  on  the  turf 
Where  Shakspere  lies." 

But  Akenside  is  too  abstract.  In  place  of  images, 
he  presents  the  reader  with  dissertations.  A  poem 
which  takes  imagination  as  its  subject  rather  than 
its  method  will  inevitably  remain,  not  poetry  but  a 
lecture  on  poetry — a  theory  of  beauty,  not  an  example 
of  it,  Akenside  might  have  chosen  for  his  motto 
Milton's  lines: 

"  How  charming  is  divine  philosophy  ! 
Not  harsh  and  crabbed,  as  dull  fools  suppose, 
But  musical  as  is  Apollo's  lute." 

Yet  he  might  have  remembered,  too,  what  Milton  said 
about  the  duty  of  poetry  to  be  simple,  sensuous,  and 
passionate.     Akenside's  is  nothing  of  these;  it  is,  on 


7he  Landscape  Toets.  141 

the  contrary  obscure,  metaphysical,  and,  as  a  conse- 
quence, frigid.  Following  Addison,  he  names  great- 
ness and  novelty,  /.  e.,  the  sublime  and  the  wonderful, 
as,  equally  with  beauty,  the  chief  sources  of  imagina- 
tive pleasure,  and  the  whole  poem  is  a  plea  for  what 
we  are  now  accustomed  to  call  the  ideal.  In  the  first 
book  there  is  a  passage  which  is  fine  in  spirit  and — 
though  in  a  less  degree — in  expression: 

"  Who  that  from  Alpine  heights  his  laboring  eye 
Shoots  round  the  wide  horizon,  to  survey 
Nilus  or  Ganges  rolling  his  bright  wave 

Through  mountains,  plains,  through  empires  black  with  shade. 
And  continents  of  sand,  will  turn  his  gaze 
To  mark  the  windings  of  a  scanty  rill 
That  murmurs  at  his  feet  ?     The  high-born  soul 
Disdains  to  rest  her  heaven-aspiring  wing 
Beneath  its  native  quarry.     Tired  of  earth 
And  this  diurnal  scene,  she  springs  aloft 
Through  fields  of  air  ;  pursues  the  flying  storm  ; 
Rides  on  the  voUied  lightning  through  the  heavens  ; 
Or,  yoked  with  whirlwinds  and  the  northern  blast, 
Sweeps  the  long  tract  of  day." 

The  hint  for  this  passage  was  furnished  by  a  paragraph 
in  Addison's  second  paper  {Spectator,  412)  and  the 
emotion  is  the  same  to  which  Goethe  gives  utterance 
in  the  well-known  lines  of  "Faust": 

"  Doch  jedem  ist  es  eingeboren 

Dass  sein  Gefuhl  hinauf  und  vorwarts  dringt,"  etc. 

But  how  greatly  superior  in  sharpness  of  detail,  rich- 
ness of  invention,  energy  of  movement  is  the  German 
to  the  English  poet! 

Akenside  ranks  among  the   earlier  Spenserians  by 
virtue  of  his  "Virtuoso"  (1737)  and  of  several  odes 


142  iA  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

composed  in  a  ten-lined  variation  on  Spenser's  stanza. 
A  collection  of  his  "Odes"  appeared  in  1745 — the 
year  before  Collins'  and  Joseph  Warton's — and  a 
second  in  1760.  They  are  of  little  value,  but  show 
here  and  there  traces  of  Milton's  minor  poetry  and 
that  elegiac  sentiment,  common  to  the  lyrical  verse  of 
the  time,  noticeable  particularly  in  a  passage  on  the 
nightingale  in  Ode  XV.  book  i,,  "  To  the  Evening  Star." 
"The  Pleasures  of  Imagination  "  was  the  parent  of  a 
numerous  offspring  of  similarly  entitled  pieces,  among 
which  are  Joseph  Warton's  "Pleasures  of  Melan- 
choly," Campbell's  "  Pleasures  of  Hope,"  and  Rogers' 
"Pleasures  of  Memory." 

In  the  same  year  with  Thomson's  "Winter"  (1726) 
there  were  published  in  two  poetical  miscellanies  a  pair 
of  little  descriptive  pieces,  "  Grongar  Hill"  and 
"The  Country  Walk,"  written  by  John  Dyer,  a  young 
Welshman,  in  the  octosyllabic  couplet  of  Milton's 
"L'Allegro"  and  "II  Pensoroso."  ("Grongar  Hill," 
as  first  printed  was  a  sort  of  irregular  ode  with  alter- 
nate rhyming;  but  it  was  much  improved  in  later  edi- 
tions, and  rewritten  throughout  in  couplets.) 

Dyer  was  a  landscape  painter  who  had  been  educated 
at  Westminster  school,  studied  under  Richardson  at 
London,  and  spent  some  time  wandering  about  the 
mountains  of  Wales  in  the  practice  of  his  art. 
"Grongar  Hill  "  is,  in  fact,  a  pictorial  poem,  a  sketch 
of  the  landscape  seen  from  the  top  of  his  favorite 
summit  in  South  Wales.  It  is  a  slight  piece  of  work, 
careless  and  even  slovenly  in  execution,  but  with  an 
ease  and  lightness  of  touch  that  contrast  pleasantly 
with  Thomson's  and  Akenside's  ponderosity.  When 
Dyer  wrote  blank  verse  he   slipped   into   the  Thorn- 


The  Landscape  'Poets.  143 

sonian  diction,  "cumbent  sheep"  and  "purple  groves 
pomaceous."  ,But  in  ''Grongar  Hill" — although  he 
does  call  the  sun  Phoebus — the  shorter  measure  seems 
to  bring  shorter  words,  and  he  has  lines  of  Words- 
worthian  simplicity — 

"  The  woody  valleys  warm  and  low, 
The  windy  summit,  wild  and  high:" 

or  the  closing  passage,  which  Wordsworth  alludes  to 
in  his  sonnet  on  Dyer — "Long  as  the  thrush  shall  pipe 
on  Grongar  Hill  " : 

"  Grass  and  flowers  Quiet  treads 
On  the  meads  and  mountain  heads.    .  . 
And  often,  by  the  murmuring  rill, 
Hears  the  thrush  while  all  is  still. 
Within  the  groves  of  Grongar  Hill." 

Wordsworth  was  attracted  by  Dyer's  love  of  "  moun- 
tain turf"  and  "spacious  airy  downs  "  and  "naked 
Snowdon's  wide,  aerial  waste. "  The  "power  of  hills " 
was  on  him.  Like  Wordsworth,  too,  he  moralized  his 
song.  In  "Grongar  Hill,"  the  ruined  tower  suggests 
the  transience  of  human  life:  the  rivers  running  down 
to  the  sea  are  likened  to  man's  career  from  birth  to 
death;  and  Campbell's  couplet, 

"  'Tis  distance  lends  enchantment  to  the  view 
And  robes  the  mountain  in  its  azure  hue,"* 

is  thought  to  owe  something  to  Dyer's 

"As  yon  summits  soft  and  fair, 
Clad  in  colors  of  the  air, 
Which  to  those  who  journey  near 
Barren,  brown  and  rough  appear, 
Still  we  tread  the  same  coarse  way, 
The  present's  still  a  cloudy  day." 

*"  Pleasures  of  Hope." 


144  4^  History  of  Eyiglish  Romanticism. 

Dyer  went  to  Rome  to  pursue  his  art  studies  and,  on 
his  return  in  1740,  published  his  "Ruins  of  Rome"  in 
blank  verse.  He  was  not  very  successful  as  a  painter, 
and  finally  took  orders,  married,  and  settled  down  as 
a  country  parson.  In  1757  he  published  his  most 
ambitious  work,  "The  Fleece,"  a  poem  in  blank  verse 
and  in  four  books,  descriptive  of  English  wool-grow- 
ing. "The  subject  of  'The  Fleece,' sir,"  pronounced 
Johnson,  "cannot  be  made  poetical.  How  can  a  man 
write  poetically  of  serges  and  druggets? "  Didactic 
poetry,  in  truth,  leads  too  often  to  ludicrous  descents. 
Such  precepts  as  "  beware  the  rot,"  "  enclose,  enclose, 
ye  swains,"  and 

"  — the  utility  of  salt 
Teach  thy  slow  swains  "  ; 

with  prescriptions  for  the  scab,  and  advice  as  to  divers 
kinds  of  wool  combs,  are  fatal.  A  poem  of  this  class 
has  to  be  made  poetical,  by  dragging  in  episodes  and 
digressions  which  do  not  inhere  in  the  subject  itself 
but  are  artificially  associated  with  it.  Of  such  a 
nature  is  the  loving  mention — quoted  in  Wordsworth's 
sonnet — of  the  poet's  native  Carmarthenshire 

"—that  soft  tract 
Of  Cambria,  deep  embayed,  Dimetian  land, 
By  green  hills  fenced,  by  Ocean's  murmur  lulled." 

Lowell  admired  the  line  about  the  Siberian  exiles,  met 

"  On  the  dark  level  of  adversity." 

Miltonic  reminiscences  are  frequent  in  Dyer.  Sabrina 
is  borrowed  from  "Comus";  "bosky  bourn"  and 
"soothest  shepherd"  from  the  same;  "the  light 
fantastic  toe "  from   "L'Allegro";   "level  brine"  and 


The  Landscape  Toets.  145 

"nor  taint-worm  shall  infect  the  yeaning  herds,"  from 
"Lycidas";  "audience  pure  be  thy  delight,  though 
few,"  from  "Paradise  Lost." 

"Mr.  Dyer,"  wrote  Gray  to  Horace  Walpole  in 
1751,  "has  more  of  poetry  in  his  imagination  than 
almost  any  of  our  number;  but  rough  and  injudicious." 
Akenside,  who  helped  Dyer  polish  the  manuscript  of 
"The  Fleece,"  said  that  "he  would  regulate  his 
opinion  of  the  reigning  taste  by  the  fate  of  Dyer's 
'Fleece';  for  if  that  v/ere  ill  received,  he  should  not 
think  it  any  longer  reasonable  to  expect  fame  from 
excellence."  The  romantic  element  in  Dyer's  imagi- 
nation appears  principally  in  his  love  of  the  mountains 
and  of  ancient  ruins.  Johnson  cites  with  approval 
a  sentence  in  "  The  Ruins  of  Rome  " : 

"At  dead  of  night, 
The  hermit  oft,  midst  his  orisons,  hears 
Aghast  the  voice  of  Time  disparting  towers."  * 

These  were  classic  ruins.  Perhaps  the  doctor's 
sympathy  would  not  have  been  so  quickly  extended 
to  the  picture  of  the  moldering  Gothic  tower  in 
"Grongar  Hill,"  or  of  "solitary  Stonehenge  gray 
with  moss,"  in  "The  Fleece." 

*  Cf.  Wordsworth's 

"Some  casual  shout  that  broke  the  silent  air, 
Or  the  unimaginable  touch  of  time." 

—Mutability  :  Ecclesiastical  Satinets,  XXXIV. 


SlAiinORLlAL  SCHOOL, 


•■*►    •<■*  MtWuMk  W 


CHAPTER   V. 
tibe  /Dbiltonlc  (3roup. 

That  the  influence  of  Milton,  in  the  romantic 
revival  of  the  eighteenth  century,  should  have  been 
hardly  second  in  importance  to  Spenser's  is  a  con- 
firmation of  our  remark  that  Augustan  literature  was 
**  classical  "  in  a  way  of  its  own.  It  is  another  example 
of  that  curiously  topsy-turvy  condition  of  things  in 
which  rhyme  was  a  mark  of  the  classic,  and  blank  verse 
of  the  romantic.  For  Milton  is  the  most  truly  clas- 
sical of  English  poets;  and  yet,  from  the  angle  of 
observation  at  which  the  eighteenth  century  viewed 
him,  he  appeared  a  romantic.  It  was  upon  his 
romantic  side,  at  all  events,  that  the  new  school  of 
poets  apprehended  and  appropriated  him. 

This  side  was  present  in  Milton  in  a  fuller  measure 
than  his  completed  works  would  show.  It  is  well 
known  that  he,  at  one  time,  had  projected  an 
Arthuriad,  a  design  which,  if  carried  out,  might  have 
anticipated  Tennyson  and  so  deprived  us  of  "The 
Idyls  of  the  King."  "I  betook  me,"  he  writes,  "among 
those  lofty  fables  and  romances  which  recount  in 
solemn  cantos  the  deeds  of  knighthood."*  And  in  the 
"  Epitaphium  Damonis  "  he  thus  apprises  the  reader 
of  his  purpose: 

Ipse  ego  Dardanias  Rutupina  per  asquora  puppes, 
Dicam.et  Pandrasidos  regnum  vetus  Inogenise, 
*"  An  Apology  for  Sraectymnuus." 

146 


7he  DAiltonic  Group.  i47 

Brennumque  Arviragumque  duces,  priscumque  Belinum, 
Et  tandem  Armoricos  Britonum  sub  lege  colonos  ; 
Turn  gravidam  Arturo  fatali  fraude  lorgernen  ; 
Mendaces  vultus,  assumptaque  Gorlois  arma, 
Merlini  dolus."* 

The  **  matter  of  Britain"  never  quite  lost  the  fasci- 
nation which  it  had  exercised  over  his  youthful 
imagination,  as  appears  from  passages  in  "Paradise 
Lost"!  and  even  in  "Paradise  Regained."  J  But 
with  his  increasing  austerity,  both  religious  and 
literary,  Milton  gravitated  finally  to  Hebraic  themes 
and  Hellenic  art  forms.  He  wrote  Homeric  epics  and 
^schylean  tragedies,  instead  of  masques  and  sonnets, 
of  rhymed  pieces  on  the  Italian  model,  like  "  L'Allegro  " 
and  "  II  Penseroso,"  and  of  stanzaic  poems,  like  the 
"Nativity  Ode,"  touched  with  Elizabethan  conceits. 
He  relied  more  and  more  upon  sheer  construction  and 
weight  of  thought  and  less  upon  decorative  richness  of 
detail.  His  diction  became  naked  and  severe,  and  he 
employed   rhyme    but   sparingly,    even    in   the  choral 

*  Lines  162-168.     See  also  "  Mansus,"  80-84. 

f  "  What  resounds 

In  fable  or  romance  of  Uther's  son, 

Begirt  with  British  and  Armoric  knights  ; 

And  all  who  since,  baptized  or  infidel, 

Jousted  in  Aspramont,  or  Montalban, 

Damasco,  or  Marocco,  or  Trebisond, 

Or  whom  Biserta  sent  from  Afric  shore 

When  Charlemain  with  all  his  peerage  fell 

By  Fontarabbia." 

—Book  I.  579-587, 

X  "  Faery  damsels  met  in  forest  wide 

By  knights  of  Logres,  or  of  Lyones, 

Lancelot,  or  Pelleas,  or  Pellenore." 

— Booi  II.  359-361. 


148  t/^  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

parts  of  "Samson  Agonistes."  In  short,  like  Goethe, 
he  grew  classical  as  he  grew  old.  It  has  been 
mentioned  that  "Paradise  Lost"  did  much  to 
keep  alive  the  tradition  of  English  blank  verse 
through  a  period  remarkable  for  its  bigoted  devotion 
to  rhyme,  and  especially  to  the  heroic  couplet.  Yet  it 
was,  after  all,  Milton's  early  poetry,  in  which  rhyme  is 
used — though  used  so  differently  from  the  way  in 
which  Pope  used  it — that  counted  for  most  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  romantic  movement.  Professor  Masson  con- 
tradicts the  common  assertion,  that  "  Paradise  Lost  " 
was  first  written  into  popularity  by  Addison's  Saturday 
papers.  While  that  series  was  running,  Tonson  brought 
out  (1711-13)  an  edition  of  Milton's  poetical  works 
which  was  "the  ninth  of  'Paradise  Lost,'  the  eighth 
of  *  Paradise  Regained,'  the  seventh  of  '  Samson 
Agonistes  '  and  the  sixth  of  the  minor  poems."  The 
previous  issues  of  the  minor  poems  had  been  in  1645, 
1673,  1695,  1705,  and  1707.  Six  editions  in  sixty- 
eight  years  is  certainly  no  very  great  showing.  After 
1713  editions  of  Milton  multiplied  rapidly;  by  1763 
**  Paradise  Lost  "  was  in  its  forty-sixth,  and  the  minor 
poems  in  their  thirtieth.* 

Addison  selected  an  occasional  passage  from 
Milton's  juvenile  poems,  in  the  Spectator;  but  from  all 
obtainable  evidence,  it  seems  not  doubtful  that  they 
had  been  comparatively  neglected,  and  that,  although 
reissued  from  time  to  time  in  complete  editions  of 
Milton's  poetry,  they  were  regarded  merely  as  pen- 
dents to  "Paradise  Lost  "  and  floated  by  its  reputa- 
tion. "Whatever  causes,"  says  Dryden,  "Milton 
alleges  for  the  abolishing  of  rime  .  .  .  his  own  par- 
*  "  Masson's  Life  of  Milton,"  Vol.  VI.  p.  789. 


7he  zMiltonic  Group.  149 

ticular  reason  is  plainly  this,  that  rime  was  not  his 
talent:  he  had  neither  the  ease  of  doing  it,  nor  the 
graces  of  it:  which  is  manifest  in  his  'Juvenilia'  or 
verses  written  in  his  youth;  where  his  rime  is  always 
constrained  and  forced  and  comes  hardly  from  him." 
Joseph  Warton,  writing  in  1756,*  after  quoting 
copiously  from  the  "  Nativity  Ode,"  which,  he  says,  is 
"not  sufficiently  read  nor  admired,"  continues  as 
follows:  "I  have  dwelt  chiefly  on  this  ode  as  much 
less  celebrated  than  '  L'Allegro '  and  '  II  Pen- 
seroso,'f  which  are  now  universally  known;  but 
which,  by  a  strange  fatality,  lay  in  a  sort  of  obscurity, 
the  private  enjoyment  of  a  few  curious  readers,  till  they 
were  set  to  admirable  music  by  Mr.  Handel.  And 
indeed  this  volume  of  Milton's  miscellaneous  poems 

*"  Essay  on  Pope,"  Vol.  I.  pp.  36-38  (5th  edition).  In  the  dedi- 
cation to  Young,  Warton  says :  "  The  Epistles  [Pope's]  on  the 
Characters  of  Men  and  Women,  and  your  sprightly  Satires,  my  good 
friend,  are  more  frequently  perused  and  quoted  than  '  L'Allegro ' 
and  '  II  Penseroso '  of  Milton." 

■)•  The  Rev.  Francis  Peck,  in  his  "  New  Memoirs  of  the  Life  and 
Poetical  Works  of  Mr.  John  Milton,"  in  1740,  says  that  these  two 
poems  are  justly  admired  by  foreigners  as  well  as  Englishmen,  and 
have  therefore  been  translated  into  all  the  modern  languages.  This 
volume  contains,  among  other  things,  "  An  Examination  of  Milton's 
Style  ";  "  Explanatory  and  Critical  Notes  on  Divers  Passages  of 
Milton  and  Shakspere  ";  "The  Resurrection,"  a  blank  verse  imita- 
tion of  Milton  by  "  a  friend  of  the  editor's  in  London,"  with  analyses 
of  "  Lycidas,"  "  Comus,"  "L'Allegro"  and  "II  Penseroso,"  and 
the  "Nativity  Ode."  Peck  defends  Milton's  rhymed  poems  against 
Dryden's  strictures.  "He  was  both  a  perfect  master  of  rime  and 
could  also  express  something  by  it  which  nobody  else  ever  thought 
of."  He  compares  the  verse  paragraphs  of  "  Lycidas  "  to  musical 
bars  and  pronounces  its  system  of  "dispersed  rimes"  admirable  and 
unique. 


150  <iA  History  of  English '^manticism. 

has  not  till  very  lately  met  with  suitable  regard. 
Shall  I  offend  any  rational  admirer  of  Pope,  by  remark- 
ing that  these  juvenile  descriptive  poems  of  Milton,  as 
well  as  his  Latin  elegies,  are  of  a  strain  far  more 
exalted  than  any  the  former  author  can  boast?" 

The  first  critical  edition  of  the  minor  poems  was 
published  in  1785,  by  Thomas  Warton,  whose  annota- 
tions have  been  of  great  service  to  all  later  editors. 
As  late  as  1779,  Dr.  Johnson  spoke  of  these  same 
poems  with  an  absence  of  appreciation  that  now  seems 
utterly  astounding.  "  Those  who  admire  the  beauties 
of  this  great  poet  sometimes  force  their  own  judg- 
ment into  false  admiration  of  his  little  pieces,  and 
prevail  upon  themselves  to  think  that  admirable  which 
is  only  singular."  Of  Lycidas  he  says:  "  In  this  poem 
there  is  no  nature,  for  there  is  no  truth;  there  is  no 
art,  for  there  is  nothing  new.  Its  form  is  that  of  a 
pastoral,  easy,  vulgar,  and  therefore  disgusting.  .  . 
Surely  no  man  could  have  fancied  that  he  read 
'  Lycidas '  with  pleasure,  had  he  not  known  its 
author."  He  acknowledges  that  "L' Allegro"  and 
"II  Penseroso  "  are  "noble  efforts  of  imagination"; 
and  that,  "  as  a  series  of  lines,"  '*  Comus  "  "may  be 
considered  as  worthy  of  all  the  admiration  with  which 
the  votaries  have  received  it."  But  he  makes  peevish 
objections  to  its  dramatic  probability,  finds  its  dia- 
logues and  soliloquies  tedious,  and  unmindful  of  the 
fate  of  Midas,  solemnly  pronounces  the  songs — 
"Sweet  Echo"  and  "  Sabrina  fair" — "harsh  in  their 
diction  and  not  very  musical  in  their  numbers"!  Of 
the  sonnets  he  says:  "  They  deserve  not  any  particu- 
lar criticism;  for  of  the  best  it  can  only  be  said  that 
they  are  not  bad."*     Boswell  reports  that,  Hannah 

*"  Life  of  Milton." 


Ihe  DAiltonic  Group.  151 

More  having  expressed  her  ''wonder  that  the  poet 
who  had  written  'Paradise  Lost'  should  write  such 
poor  sonnets,"  Johnson  replied:  "  Milton,  madam, 
was  a  genius  that  could  cut  a  colossus  from  a  rock,  but 
could  not  carve  heads  upon  cherry  stones," 

The  influence  of  Milton's  minor  poetry  first  becomes 
noticeable  in  the  fifth  decade  of  the  century,  and  in 
the  work  of  a  new  group  of  lyrical  poets:  Collins, 
Gray,  Mason,  and  the  brothers  Joseph  and  Thomas 
Warton.  To  all  of  these  Milton  was  master.  But  just 
as  Thomson  and  Shenstone  got  original  effects  from 
Spenser's  stanza,  while  West  and  Cambridge  and  Lloyd 
were  nothing  but  echoes;  so  Collins  and  Gray — 
immortal  names — drew  fresh  music  from  Milton's 
organ  pipes,  while  for  the  others  he  set  the  tune. 
The  Wartons,-  indeed,  though  imitative  always  in  their 
verse,  have  an  independent  and  not  inconsiderable 
position  in  criticism  and  literary  scholarship,  and  I 
shall  return  to  them  later  in  that  connection.  Mason, 
whose  "English  Garden"  has  been  reviewed  in 
chapter  iv,  was  a  very  small  poet  and  a  somewhat 
absurd  person.  He  aped,  first  Milton  and  afterward 
Gray,  so  closely  that  his  work  often  seems  like  parody. 
In  general  the  Miltonic  revival  made  itself  manifest 
in  a  more  dispersed  and  indirect  fashion  than  the 
Spenserian;  but  there  was  no  lack  of  formal  imitations, 
also,  and  it  will  be  advisable  to  notice  a  few  of  these 
here  in  the  order  of  their  dates. 

In    1740    Joseph   Warton,    then   an    Oxford    under-'') 
,  graduate,   wrote  his  blank-verse  poem  "The  Enthu- 
siast, or  the  Lover  of  Nature."     The  work  of  a  boy  of 
eighteen,  it  had  that  instinct  of  the  future,  of  the  set 
of   the   literary   current,  not    uncommon    in   youthful 


152  <^  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

artists,  of  which  Chatterton's  precocious  verses  are  a 
remarkable  instance.  Composed  only  ten  years  later 
than  the  completed  "Seasons,"  and  five  years  before 
Shenstone  began  to  lay  out  his  miniature  wildernesses 
at  the  Leasowes,  it  is  more  distinctly  modern  and 
romantic  in  its  preference  of  wild  nature  to  cultivated 
landscape,  and  of  the  literature  of  fancy  to  the  litera- 
ture of  reason. 

"  What  are  the  lays  of  artful  Addison, 
Coldly  correct,  to  Shakspere's  warblings  wild  ?  " 

asks  the  young  enthusiast,  in  Milton's  own  phrase. 
And  again 

"  Can  Kent  design  like  Nature  ?   .  .  . 

Though  he,  by  rules  unfettered,  boldly  scorns 
Formality  and  method,  round  and  square 
Disdaining,  plans  irregularly  great  ?  .  .  . 

Versailles 
May  boast  a  thousand  fountains  that  can  cast 
The  tortured  waters  to  the  distant  heavens  ; 
Yet  let  me  choose  some  pine-topped  precipice 
Abrupt  and  shaggy,  whence  a  foamy  stream, 
Like  Anio,  tumbling  roars  ;  or  some  black  heath 
Where  straggling  stands  the  mournful  juniper, 
Or  yew  tree  scathed." 

The  enthusiast  haunts  "dark  forests"  and  loves  to 
listen  to  "hollow  winds  and  ever-beating  waves"  and 
"sea-mew's  clang."  Milton  appears  at  every  turn, 
not  only  in  single  epithets  like  "  Lydian  airs," 
"the  level  brine,"  "  low-thoughted  cares,"  '"the  light 
fantastic  dance,"  but  in  the  entire  spirit,  imagery,  and 


The  zMiltonic  Group.  153 

diction  of  the  poem.  A  few  lines  will  illustrate  this 
better  than  any  description. 

"  Ye  green-robed  Dryads,  oft  at  dusky  eve 

By  wondering  shepherds  seen  ;  to  forests  brown, 
To  unfrequented  meads  and  pathless  wilds 
Lead  me  from  gardens  decked  with  art's  vain 

pomp.   .   . 
But  let  me  never  fail  in  cloudless  night, 
When  silent  Cynthia  in  her  silver  car 
Through  the  blue  concave  slides,  .  .  . 
To  seek  some  level  mead,  and  there  invoke 
Old  midnight's  sister,  contemplation  sage 
(Queen  of  the  rugged  brow  and  stern-fixed  eye). 
To  lift  my  soul  above  this  little  earth. 
This  folly-fettered  world  :  to  purge  my  ears, 
That  I  may  hear  the  rolling  planets'  song 
And  tuneful  turning  spheres." 

Mason's  Miltonic  imitations,  "  Musseus,"  **  II  Bel- 
licoso  "and  "  II  Pacifico"  were  written  in  1744 — accord- 
ing to  the  statement  of  their  author,  whose  statements, 
however,  are  not  always  to  be  relied  upon.  The  first 
was  published  in  1747;  the  second  "surreptitiously 
printed  in  a  magazine  and  afterward  inserted  in 
Pearch's  miscellany,"  finally  revised  and  published  by 
the  author  in  1797;  the  third  first  printed  in  1748  in 
the  Cambridge  verses  on  the  peace  of  Aix-la-Chapelle. 
These  pieces  follow  copy  in  every  particular.  "II 
Bellicoso,"  e.  g.,  opens  with  the  invocation. 

"  Hence,  dull  lethargic  Peace, 

Born  in  some  hoary  beadsman's  cell  obscure  !  " 

The  genealogies  of  Peace  and  War  are  recited,  and 
contrasted  pictures  of  peaceful  and  warlike  pleasures 
presented  in  an  order  which  corresponds  as  precisely 


154  e^  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

as    possible    to    Milton's    in    ''L' Allegro"   and    "II 
Penseroso." 

"  Then,  to  unbend  my  mind,  I'll  roam 
Amid  the  cloister's  silent  gloom  ; 
Or,  where  ranged  oaks  their  shades  diffuse, 
Hold  dalliance  with  my  darling  Muse, 
Recalling  oft  some  heaven-born  strain 
That  warbled  in  Augustan  reign; 
Or  turn,  well  pleased,  the  Grecian  page, 
If  sweet  Theocritus  engage, 
Or  blithe  Anacreon,  mirthful  wight, 
Carol  his  easy  love-lay  light    .    .    . 
And  joys  like  these,  if  Peace  inspire. 
Peace,  with  thee  I  string  the  lyre."  * 


"Musseus"  was  a  monody  on  the  death  of  Pope, 
employing  the  pastoral  machinery  and  the  varied 
irregular  measure  of  "Lycidas."  Chaucer,  Spenser, 
and  Milton,  under  the  names  of  Tityrus,  Colin  Clout, 
and  Thyrsis,  are  introduced  as  mourners,  like  Camus 
and  St.  Peter  in  the  original.  Tityrus  is  made  to 
lament  the  dead  shepherd  in  very  incorrect  Middle 
English.  Colin  Clout  speaks  two  stanzas  of  the  form 
used  in  the  first  eclogue  of  "The  Shepherd's  Calendar," 
and  three  stanzas  of  the  form  used  in  **The  Faerie 
Queene,"  Thyrsis  speaks  in  blank  verse  and  is  an- 
swered by  the  shade  of  Musaeus  (Pope)  in  heroic 
couplets.  Verbal  travesties  of  "  Lycidas  "  abound — 
"laureate  hearse,"  " forego  each  vain  excuse,"  "  with- 
out the  loan  of  some  poetic  woe,"  etc. ;  apd  the  closing 
passage  is  reworded  thus: 

*"I1  Pacifico:   Works  of  William  Mason,"  London,  1811,  Vol. 
I.  p.  166. 


The  OAiltonic  Group,  155 

"  Thus  the  fond  swain  his  Doric  oat  essayed, 
Manhood's  prime  honors  rising  on  his  cheek: 
Trembling  he  strove  to  court  the  tuneful  Maid, 
With  stripling  arts  and  dalliance  all  too  weak, 
Unseen,  unheard  beneath  an  hawthorn  shade. 
But  now  dun  clouds  the  welkin  'gan  to  streak; 
And  now  down  dropt  the  larks  and  ceased  their  strain: 
They  ceased,  and  with  them  ceased  the  shepherd  swain." 

In  1746  appeared  a  small  volume  of  odes,  fourteen 
in  number,  by  Joseph  Warton,  and  another  by  William 
Collins.*  The  event  is  thus  noticed  by  Gray  in  a 
letter  to  Thomas  Wharton:  "Have  you  seen  the 
works  of  two  young  authors,  a  Mr.  Warton  and  a  Mr. 
Collins,  both  writers  of  odes?  It  is  odd  enough,  but 
each  is  the  half  of  a  considerable  man,  and  one  the 
counterpart  of  the  other.  The  first  has  but  little 
invention,  very  poetical  choice  of  expression  and  a 
good  ear.  The  second,  a  fine  fancy,  modelled  upon 
the  antique,  a  bad  ear,  great  variety  of  words  and 
images  with  no  choice  at  all.  They  both  deserve  to 
last  some  years,  but  will  not."  Gray's  critical  acute- 
ness  is  not  altogether  at  fault  in  this  judgment,  but 
half  of  his  prophecy  has  failed,  and  his  mention  of 
Collins  is  singularly  inappreciative.  The  names  of 
Collins  and  Gray  are  now  closely  associated  in  literary 
history,  but  in  life  the  two  men  were  in  no  way  con- 
nected. Collins  and  the  Wartons,  on  the  other  hand, 
were  personal  friends.  Joseph  Warton  and  Collins 
had  been  schoolfellows  at  Winchester,  and  it  was  at 
first  intended  that  their  odes,  which  were  issued  in  the 
same  month  (December),  should  be  published  in  a 
volume  together.     Warton's   collection   was   immedi- 

*  "  Odes  on  Several  Descriptive  and  Allegoric  Subjects." 


156  <t/l  History  of  English  T^omanticism. 

ately  successful;  but  Collins'  was  a  failure,  and  the 
author,  in  his  disappointment,  burned  the  unsold 
copies. 

The  odes  of  Warton  which  most  nearly  resemble 
Milton  are  "To  Fancy,"  ''To  Solitude,"  and  "To 
the  Nightingale,"  all  in  the  eight-syllabled  couplet. 
A  single  passage  will  serve  as  a  specimen  of  their 
quality : 

"  Me,  Goddess,  by  the  right  hand  lead 
Sometimes  through  the  yellow  mead, 
Where  Joy  and  white-robed  Peace  resort 
And  Venus  keeps  her  festive  court: 
Where  Mirth  and  Youth  each  evening  meet, 
And  lightly  trip  with  nimble  feet, 
Nodding  their  lily-crowned  heads; 
Where  Laughter  rose-lip'd  Hebe  leads,"  etc.* 

Collins'  "Ode  to  Simplicity"  is  in  the  stanza  of  the 
"  Nativity  Ode,"  and  his  beautiful  "  Ode  to  Evening," 
in  the  unrhymed  sapphics  which  Milton  had  employed 
in  his  translation  of  Horace's  "Ode  to  Pyrrha." 
There  are  Miltonic  reminiscences  like  "folding-star," 
"religious  gleams,"  "play  with  the  tangles  of  her 
hair,"  and  in  the  closing  couplet  of  the  "  Ode  to  Fear," 

"  His  cypress  wreath  my  meed  decree, 
And  I,  O  Fear,  will  dwell  with  thee." 

But,  in  general,  Collins  is  much  less  slavish  than  War- 
ton  in  his  imitation. 

Joseph  Warton's  younger  brother,  Thomas,  wrote 
in  1745,  and  published  in  1747,  "The  Pleasures  of 
Melancholy,"  a  blank-verse  poem  of  three  hundred  and 
fifteen  lines,  made  up,  in  nearly  equal  parts,  of  Milton 

*"To  Fancy." 


The  [Miltonic  Group.  157 

and  Akenside,  with  frequent  touches  of  Thomson, 
Spenser,  and  Pope's  "Epistle  of  Eloisa  to  Abelard." 
Warton  was  a  lad  of  seventeen  when  his  poem  was 
written:  it  was  published  anonymously  and  was  by 
some  attributed  to  Akenside,  whose  "  Pleasures  of 
Imagination"  (1744)  had,  of  course,  suggested  the 
title.  A  single  extract  will  suffice  to  show  how  well 
the  young  poet  knew  his  Milton: 

"  O  lead  me,  queen  sublime,  to  solemn  glooms 
Congenial  with  my  soul;  to  cheerless  shades, 
To  ruined  seats,  to  twilight  cells  and  bowers, 
Where  thoughtful  Melancholy  loves  to  muse, 
Her  favorite  midnight  haunts.    .    . 
Beneath  yon  ruined  abbey's  moss-grown  piles 
Oft  let  me  sit,  at  twilight  hour  of  eve, 
When  through  some  western  window  the  pale  moon 
Pours  her  long-levelled  rule  of  sireat?nng  light  : 
While  sullen  sacred  silence  reigns  around, 
Save  the  lone  screech-owl's  note,  who  builds  his  bower 
Amid  the  moldering  caverns  dark  and  damp;  * 
Or  the  calm  breeze,  that  rustles  in  the  leaves 
Of  flaunting  ivy,  that  with  mantle  green 
Invests  some  wasted  tower.    .    . 
Then  when  the  sullen  shades  of  evening  close 
Where  through  the  room  a  blindly-glimmering  gloom 
The  dying  embers  scatter,  far  remote 

From  Mirth's  mad  shouts,  that  through  the  illumined  roof 
Resound  with  festive  echo,  let  me  sit 
Blessed  with  the  lowly  cricket's  drowsy  dirge.    .    . 

*  Cf.  Gray's  "  Elegy,"  first  printed  in  1751  : 

"  Save  that,  from  yonder  ivy-mantled  tower, 

The  moping  owl  does  to  the  moon  complain 
Of  such  as,  wandering  near  her  secret  bower, 
Molest  her  ancient,  solitary  reign." 


158  iA  History  of  English  'T^omanticism. 

This  sober  hour  of  silence  will  unmask 

False  Folly's  smile,  that  like  the  dazzling  spells 

Of  wily  Comus  cheat  the  unweeting  eye 

With  6/ear  illusion,  and  persuade  to  drink 

That  charmed  cup  which  Reason's  mintage  fair 

Unmoulds,  and  stamps  the  monster  on  the  man." 

I  italicize  the  most  direct  borrowings,  but  both  the 
Wartons  had  so  saturated  themselves  with  Milton's 
language,  verse,  and  imagery  that  they  ooze  out  of 
them  at  every  pore.  Thomas  Warton's  poems,  issued 
separately  from  time  to  time,  were  first  published  col- 
lectively in  1777.  They  are  all  imitative,  and  most  of 
them  imitative  of  Milton.  His  two  best  odes,  "On 
the  First  of  April  "  and  "On  the  Approach  of  Sum- 
mer," are  in  the  familiar  octosyllabics. 

"  Haste  thee,  Nymph!  and  hand  in  hand, 
With  thee  lead  a  buxom  band  ; 
Bring  fantastic-footed  joy, 
With  Sport,  that  yellow-tressed  boy,"  etc.* 

In  Gray  and  Collins,  though  one  can  hardly  read  a 
page  without  being  reminded  of  Milton,  it  is  com- 
monly in  subtler  ways  than  this.  Gray,  for  example, 
has  been  careful  to  point  out  in  his  notes  his  verbal 
obligations  to  Milton,  as  well  as  to  Shakspere,  Cowley, 
Dryden,  Pindar,  Vergil,  Dante,  and  others;  but  what 
he  could  not  well  point  out,  because  it  was  probably 
unconscious,  was  the  impulse  which  Milton  frequently 
gave  to  the  whole  exercise  of  his  imagination.  It  is 
not  often  that  Gray  treads  so  closely  in  Milton's  foot- 

*  "  On  the  Approach  of  Summer."  The  "  wattled  cotes,"  "  sweet- 
briar  hedges,"  "  woodnotes  wild,"  "  tanned  haycock  in  the  mead," 
and  "  valleys  where  mild  whispers  use,"  are  transferred  bodily  into 
this  ode  from  "  L' Allegro." 


The  OAiltonic  Group.  159 

steps  as  he  does  in  the  latest  of  his  poems,  the  ode 
written  for  music,  and  performed  at  Cambridge  in 
1769  on  the  installation  of  the  Duke  of  Grafton  as 
Chancellor;  in  which  Milton  is  made  to  sing  a  stanza 
in  the  meter  of  the  "  Nativity  Ode  " : 

"  Ye  brown  o'er-arching  groves 

That  Contemplation  loves, 
Where  willowy  Camus  lingers  with  delight; 

Oft  at  the  blush  of  dawn 

I  trod  your  level  lawn, 
Oft  wooed,  the  gleam  of  Cynthia,  silver  bright, 
In  cloisters  dim,  far  from  the  haunts  of  Folly, 
With  Freedom  by  my  side,  and  soft-eyed  Melancholy." 

Not  only  the  poets  who  have  been  named,  but  many 
obscure  versifiers  are  witnesses  to  this  Miltonic  revi- 
val. It  is  usually,  indeed,  the  minor  poetry  of  an  age 
which  keeps  most  distinctly  the  "cicatrice  and  capable 
impressure  "  of  a  passing  literary  fashion.  If  we  look 
through  Dodsley's  collection,*  we  find  a  melange  of 
satires  in  the  manner  of  Pope,  humorous  fables  in  the 
manner  of  Prior,  didactic  blank-verse  pieces  after  the 
fashion  of  Thomson  and  Akenside,  elegiac  quatrains 
on  the  model  of  Shenstone  and  Gray,  Pindaric  odes  ad 
nauseam,  with  imitations  of  Spenser  and  Milton,  f 

*  Three  volumes  appeared  in  1748;  a  second  edition,  with  Vol. 
IV.  added  in  1749,  Vols.  V.  and  VI.  in  1758.  There  were  new  editions 
in  1765,  1770,  1775,  and  1782.  Pearch's  continuations  were  pub- 
lished in  1768  (Vols.  VII.  and  VIII.),  and  1770  (Vols.  IX.  and  X.); 
Mendez's  independent  collection  in  1767;  and  Bell's  "  Fugitive  Poe- 
try," in  18  volumes,  in  1790-97. 

\  The  reader  who  may  wish  to  pursue  this  inquiry  farther  will 
find  the  following  list  of  Miltonic  imitations  useful:  Dodsley's 
"  Miscellany,"  I.  164,  Pre-existence  :  "  A  Poem  in  Imitation  of 
Milton,"  by  Dr.  Evans.  This  is  in  blank  verse,  and  Gray,  in  a  let- 
ter to  Walpole,  calls  it  "nonsense."     II.    109,  "  The  Institution  of 


i6o  it/J  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

To  the  increasing  popularity  of  Milton's  minor  poe- 
try is  due  the  revival  of  the  sonnet.  Gray's  solitary 
sonnet,  on  the  death  of  his  friend  Richard  West,  was 
composed  in  1742  but  not  printed  till  1775,  after  the 
author's  death.  This  was  the  sonnet  selected  by 
Wordsworth,  to  illustrate  his  strictures  on  the  spurious 
poetic  diction  of  the  eighteenth  century,  in  the  appen- 
dix to  the  preface  to  the  second  edition  of  **  Lyrical 
Ballads."  The  style  is  noble,  though  somewhat  arti- 
ficial: the  order  of  the  rhymes  conforms  neither  to  the 
Shaksperian  nor  the  Miltonic  model.  Mason  wrote 
fourteen  sonnets  at  various  times  between  1748  and 
1797;  the  earlier  date  is  attached,  in  his  collected 
works,  to  "  Sonnet  I.  Sent  to  a  Young  Lady  with 
Dodsley's  Miscellanies."  They  are  of  the  strict  Ital- 
ian or  Miltonic  form,  and  abound  in  Miltonic  allusions 

the  Order  of  the  Garter,"  by  Gilbert  West.  This  is  a  dramatic 
poem,  with  a  chorus  of  British  bards,  which  is  several  times  quoted 
and  commended  in  Joseph  Warton's  "Essay  on  Pope."  West's 
"  Monody  on  the  Death  of  Queen  Caroline,"  is  a  "  Lycidas"  imita- 
tion. III.  214,  "Lament  for  Melpomene  and  Calliope,"  by  J.  G. 
Cooper;  also  a  "  Lycidas  "  poem.  IV.  50,  "  Penshurst,"  by  Mr.  F. 
Coventry:  a  very  close  imitation  of  "  L'Allegro "  and  "II  Pen- 
seroso."  IV.  181,  "  Ode  to  Fancy,"  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Merrick:  octo- 
syllables. IV.  229,  "Solitude,  an  Ode,"  by  Dr.  Grainger:  octosyl- 
lables. V.  283,  "Prologue  to  Comus,"  performed  at  Bath,  1756. 
VI.  148,  "  Vacation,"  by ,  Esq.:  "  L'Allegro,"  very  close — 

"  These  delights,  Vacation,  give, 

And  I  with  thee  will  choose  to  live." 

IX.  (Pearch)  199,  "  Ode  to  Health,"  by  J.  H.  B.,  Esq. :  "  L'Allegro." 

X.  5,  "  The  Valetudinarian,"  by  Dr.  Marriott:  "L'Allegro,"  ver}' 
close.  X.  97,  "  To  the  Moon,"  by  Robert  Lloyd:  "  II  Penseroso," 
close.  Parody  is  one  of  the  surest  testimonies  to  the  prevalence  of  a 
literary  fashion,  and  in  Vol.  X.  p.  269  of  Pearch,  occurs  a  humorous 
"  Ode  to  Horror,"  burlesquing  "  The  Enthusiast  "  and  "  The  Pleas- 


The  zMiltonic  Group.  i6i 

and  wordings.  All  but  four  of  Thomas  Edwards'  fifty 
sonnets,  1750-65,  are  on  Milton's  model.  Thirteen 
of  them  were  printed  in  Dodsley's  second  volume. 
They  have  little  value,  nor  have  those  of  Benjamin 
Stillingfleet,  some  of  which  appear  to  have  been  writ- 
ten before  1750.  Of  much  greater  interest  are  the 
sonnets  of  Thomas  Warton,  nine  in  number  and  all 
Miltonic  in  form.  Warton's  collected  poems  were  not 
published  till  1777,  and  his  sonnets  are  undated,  but 
some  of  them  seem  to  have  been  written  as  early  as 
1750.  They  are  graceful  in  expression  and  reflect 
their  author's  antiquarian  tastes.  They  were  praised 
by  Hazlitt,  Coleridge,  and  Lamb;  and  one  of  them, 
"To  the  River  Lodon,"  has  been  thought  to  have 
suggested  Coleridge's  "  To  the  River  Otter — " 

"  Dear  native  stream,  wild  streamlet  of  the  west — " 

ures  of  Melancholy,"  "  in  the  allegoric,  descriptive,  alliterative,  epi- 
thetical,  hyperbolical,  and  diabolical  style  of  our  modern  ode-wrights 
and  monody-mongers,"  from  which  I  extract  a  passage  : 

"  O  haste  thee,  mild  Miltonic  maid, 

From  yonder  yew's  sequestered  shade.    .    . 
O  thou  whom  wandering  Warton  saw. 
Amazed  with  more  than  youthful  awe, 
As  by  the  pale  moon's  glimmering  gleam 
He  mused  his  melancholy  theme. 
O  Curfew-loving  goddess,  haste  1 
O  waft  me  to  some  Scythian  waste. 
Where,  in  Gothic  solitude. 
Mid  prospects  most  sublimely  rude. 
Beneath  a  rough  rock's  gloomy  chasm, 
Thy  sister  sits.  Enthusiasm." 

"  Bell's  Fugitive  Poetry,"  Vol.  XI.  (1791),  has  a  section  devoted  to 
"  poems  in  the  manner  of  Milton,"  by  Evans,  Mason,  T.  Warton, 
and  a  Mr.  P.  (L'Amoroso). 


1 62  a^  History  of  English  l^om  antic  ism. 

as  well  as,  perhaps,  more  remotely  Wordsworth's  series, 
"On  the  River  Duddon." 

The  poem  of  Milton  which  made  the  deepest  im- 
pression upon  the  new  school  of  poets  was  "II 
Penseroso."  This  little  masterpiece,  which  sums  up 
in  imagery  of  "Attic  choice"  the  pleasures  that 
Burton  and  Fletcher  and  many  others  had  found  in 
the  indulgence  of  the  atrabilious  humor,  fell  in  with  a 
current  of  tendency.  Pope  had  died  in  1744,  Swift 
in  1745,  the  last  important  survivors  of  the  Queen 
Anne  wits;  and  already  the  reaction  against  gayety 
had  set  in,  in  the  deliberate  and  exaggerated  solemnity 
which  took  possession  of  all  departments  of  verse, 
and  even  invaded  the  theater;  where  Melpomene 
gradually  crowded  Thalia  off  the  boards,  until  senti- 
mental comedy — /a  C07nedie  larmoyante — was  in  turn 
expelled  by  the  ridicule  of  Garrick,  Goldsmith,  and 
Sheridan.  That  elegiac  mood,  that  love  of  retire- 
ment and  seclusion,  which  have  been  remarked  in 
Shenstone,  became  now  the  dominant  note  in  English 
poetry.  The  imaginative  literature  of  the  years  1740- 
60  was  largely  the  literature  of  low  spirits.  The 
generation  was  persuaded,  with  Fletcher,  that 

"  Nothing's  so  dainty  sweet  as  lovely  melancholy." 

But  the  muse  of  their  inspiration  was  not  the  tragic 
Titaness  of  Diirer's  painting: 

"  The  Melencolia  that  transcends  all  wit."  * 

rather  the  "mild  Miltonic  maid,"  Pensive  Meditation. 
There  were  various  shades  of  somberness,  from  the 

*  See  James  Thomson's  "  City  of  Dreadful  Night,"  xxi.  Also  the 
frontispiece  to  Mr.  E.  C.  Stedman's  "  Nature  of  Poetry  "(1892)  and 
pp.  140-41  of  the  same. 


The  IMiltonic  Group,  163 

delicate  gray  of  the  Wartons  to  the  funereal  sable  of 
Young's    ''Night    Thoughts"    (1742-44)   and    Blair's 
"  Grave  "  (1743).     Gosse  speaks  of  Young  as  a  "  con- 
necting link    between  this  group  of   poets  and    their 
predecessors  of  the  Augustan  age."     His  poem  does, 
indeed,  exhibit  much  of  the  wit,  rhetorical  glitter,  and 
straining  after  point  familiar  in  Queen  Anne  verse,  in 
strange  combination  with  a  "rich  note   of  romantic 
despair.  "*     Mr.   Perry,    too,    describes  Young's    lan- 
guage as   "adorned  with  much   of  the  crude  ore  of 
romanticism.    .    .     At   this  period    the  properties   of 
the  poet  were  but  few:  the  tomb,  an  occasional  raven 
or   screech-owl,  and    the   pale   moon,    with  skeletons 
and  grinning  ghosts.    .    .     One  thing  that  the  poets  '^ 
were  never  tired  of,  was  the   tomb.    .    .    It   was   the    '.  ' 
dramatic — can  one  say  the  melodramatic? — view  of  the    ^. 
grave,  as  an  inspirer  of  pleasing  gloom,  that  was  pre-     / 
paring  readers  for  the  romantic  outbreak."  f  ^\ 

It  was,  of  course,  in  Gray's  "Elegy  Written  in  a/ 
Country  Churchyard  "  (1751),  that  this  elegiac  feeling 
found  its  most  perfect  expression.  Collins,  too,  has 
"more  hearse-like  airs  than  carols,"  and  two  of  his 
most  heartfelt  lyrics  are  the  "  Dirge  in  Cymbeline  "  and 
the  "Ode  on  the  Death  of  Mr.  Thomson."  And  the 
Wartons  were  perpetually  recommending  such  themes, 
both   by  precept   and    example.  J     Blair   and   Young, 

*  "  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,"  pp.  2og,  212. 

f  "  English  Literature  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  pp.  375,  379. 

J  Joseph  mentions  as  one  of  Spenser's  characteristics,  "a  certain 
pleasing  melancholy  in  his  sentiments,  the  constant  companion  of  an 
elegant  taste,  that  casts  a  delicacy  and  grace  over  all  his  composi- 
tion," "  Essay  on  Pope,"  Vol.  II.  p.  29.  In  his  review  of  Pope's 
"Epistle  of  Eloisa  to  Abelard,"  he  says:  "  the  effect  and  influence 
of  Melancholy,  who  is  beautifully  personified,  on  every  object  that 


i64  <^  History  of  English  'T^omanticism. 

however,  are  scarcely  to  be  reckoned  among  the 
romanticists.  They  were  heavy  didactic-moral  poets, 
for  the  most  part,  though  they  touched  the  string 
which,  in  the  Gothic  imagination,  vibrates  with  a 
musical  shiver  to  the  thought  of  death.  There  is 
something  that  accords  with  the  spirit  of  Gothic 
ecclesiastical  architecture,  with  Gray's  "ivy-mantled 
tower" — his  "long-drawn  aisle  and  fretted  vault" — 
in  the  paraphernalia  of  the  tomb  which  they  accumu- 
late so  laboriously:  the  cypress  and  the  yew,  the  owl 
and  the  midnight  bell,  the  dust  of  the  charnel-house, 
the  nettles  that  fringe  the  grave-stones,  the  dim 
sepulchral  lamp  and  gliding  specters. 

"  The  wind  is  up.     Hark  !  how  it  howls  !  Methinks 
Till  now  I  never  heard  a  sound  so  dreary. 
Doors  creak  and  windows  clap,  and  night's  foul  bird, 
Rocked  in  the  spire,  screams  loud  :  the  gloomy  aisles. 
Black-plastered  and  hung  'round  with  sTireds  of  scutcheons 
And  tattered  coats-of-arms,  send  back  the  sound, 
Laden  with  heavier  airs,  from  the  low  vaults, 
The  mansions  of  the  dead."  * 

Blair's  mortuary  verse  has  a  certain  impressiveness, 
in  its  gloomy  monotony,  not  unlike  that  of  Quarles' 
"Divine  Emblems."  Like  the  "Emblems,"  too, 
"The  Grave  "  has  been  kept  from  obIi\non  by  the  art 
of  the  illustrator,  the  well-known  series  of  engravings 
by  Schiavonetti  from  designs  by  Wm.  Blake. 

But   the    thoughtful,   scholarly  "fancy   of   the    more 

occurs  and  on  every  part  of  the  convent,  cannot  be  too  much  ap- 
plauded, or  too  often  read,  as  it  is  founded  on  nature  and  experience. 
That  temper  of  mind  casts  a  gloom  on  all  things. 

"  '  But  o'er  the  twilight  groves  and  dusky  caves,'  etc." 

— /did.,  Vol.  I.  p.  314. 
*  "  The  Grave,"  by  Robert  Blair. 


'I  he  zMiltonic  Group.  165 

purely  romantic  poets  haunted  the  dusk  rather  than 
the  ebon  blackness  of  midnight,  and  listened  more  to 
the  nightingale  than  to  the  screech-owl.  They  were 
quietists,  and  their  imagery  was  crepuscular.  They 
loved  the  twilight,  with  its  beetle  and  bat,  solitude, 
shade,  the  "darkening  vale,"  the  mossy  hermitage, 
the  ruined  abbey  moldering  in  its  moonlit  glade, 
grots,  caverns,  brooksides,  ivied  nooks,  firelight 
rooms,  the  curfew  bell  and  the  sigh  of  the  seolian 
harp.*  All  this  is  exquisitely  put  in  Collins'  "  Ode  to 
Evening."  Joseph  Warton  also  wrote  an  ''Ode  to 
Evening,"  as  well  as  one  ''To  the  Nightingale." 
Both  Wartons  wrote  odes  "To  Solitude."  Dodsley's 
"  Miscellanies"  are  full  of  odes  to  Evening,  Solitude, 

*  The  seolian  harp  was  a  favorite  property  of  romantic  poets  for  a 
hundred  years.  See  Mason's  "Ode  to  an  bolus's  Harp"  (Works, 
Vol.  I.  p.  51).  First  invented  by  the  Jesuit,  Kircher,  about  1650, 
and  described  in  his  "  Musurgia  Universalis,"  Mason  says  that  it 
was  forgotten  for  upwards  of  a  century  and  "accidentally  rediscov- 
ered" in  England  by  a  Mr.  Oswald.  It  is  mentioned  in  "The 
Castle  of  Indolence  "  (i.  xl)  as  a  novelty  : 

"  A  certain  music  never  known  before 

Here  lulled  the  pensive  melancholy  mind  " — 

a  passage  to  which  Collins  alludes  in  his  verses  on  Thomson's 
death — 

"  In  yon  deep  bed  of  whispering  reeds 
His  airy  harp  shall  now  be  laid." 

See  "  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel  "  I.  341-42  (1805.) 
"  Like  that  wild  harp  whose  magic  tone 
Is  wakened  by  the  winds  alone." 

And  Arthur  Cleveland  Coxe's  {Christian  Ballads,  1840) 

"  It  was  a  wind-harp's  magic  strong, 
Touched  by  the  breeze  in  dreamy  song," 

and  the  poetry  of  the  Annuals /aj-jm. 


i66  <^  History  of  English  l^omanticism. 

Silence,  Retirement,  Contentment,  Fancy,  Melan- 
choly, Innocence,  Simplicity,  Sleep;  of  Pleasures  of 
Contemplation  (Miss  Whately,  Vol.  IX.  p.  120)  Tri- 
umphs of  Melancholy  (James  Beattie,  Vol.  X.  p.  77), 
and  similar  matter.  Collins  introduced  a  personified 
figure  of  Melancholy  in  his  ode,  "The  Passions." 

"  With  eyes  upraised,  as  one  inspired, 
Pale  Melancholy  sat  retired  ; 
And  from  her  wild,  sequestered  seat, 
In  notes  by  distance  made  more  sweet. 
Poured  through  the  mellow  horn  her  pensive  soul  ; 
And  dashing  soft  from  rocks  around, 
Bubbling  runnels  joined  the  sound  ; 
Through  glades  and  glooms  the  mingled  measure  stole, 
Or  o'er  some  haunted  stream,  with  fond  delay, 
Round  a  holy  calm  diffusing, 
Love  of  peace  and  lonely  musing, 
In  hollow  murmurs  died  away." 

Collins  was  himself  afflicted  with  a  melancholia 
which  finally  developed  into  madness.  Gray,  a  shy, 
fastidious  scholar,  suffered  from  inherited  gout  and  a 
lasting  depression  of  spirits.  He  passed  his  life  as  a 
college  recluse  in  the  cloistered  retirement  of  Cam- 
bridge, residing  at  one  time  in  Pembroke,  and  at  an- 
other in  Peterhouse  College.  He  held  the  chair  of 
modern  history  in  the  university,  but  never  gave  a  lec- 
ture. He  declined  the  laureateship  after  Cibber's 
death.  He  had  great  learning,  and  a  taste  most  deli- 
cately correct;  but  the  sources  of  creative  impulse 
dried  up  in  him  more  and  more  under  the  desiccating 
air  of  academic  study  and  the  increasing  hold  upon 
him  of  his  constitutional  malady.  "Melancholy 
marked  him  for  her  own."  There  is  a  significant  pas- 
sage   in  one   of  his  early  letters  to  Horace  Walpole 


7he  zMiltonic  Group.  167 

(1737):  "I  have,  at  the  distance  of  half  a  mile, 
through  a  green  lane,  a  forest  (the  vulgar  call  it  a 
common)  all  my  own,  at  least  as  good  as  so,  for  I  spy 
no  human  thing  in  it  but  myself.  It  is  a  little  chaos 
of  mountains  and  precipices.  .  .  Both  vale  and  hill 
are  covered  with  most  venerable  beeches  and  other 
very  reverend  vegetables  that,  like  most  other  ancient 
people,  are  always  dreaming  out  their  old  stories  to 
the  winds.  .  .  At  the  foot  of  one  of  these,  squats 
ME,  I,  (il  penseroso)  and  there  grow  to  the  trunk  for 
a  whole  morning."  *  To  Richard  West  he  wrote,  in 
the  same  year,  "  Low  spirits  are  my  true  and  faithful 
companions";  and,  in  1742,  "Mine  is  a  white  Melan- 
choly, or  rather  Leucocholy,  for  the  most  part  .  .  . 
but  there  is  another  sort,  black  indeed,  which  I  have 
now  and  then  felt." 

When  Gray  sees  the  Eton  schoolboys  at  their  sports, 
he  is  sadly  reminded: 

"  — how  all  around  them  wait 
The  ministers  of  human  fate 
And  black  Misfortune's  baleful  train,  "f 

"Wisdom  in  sable  garb,"  and  "Melancholy,  silent 
maid"  attend  the  footsteps  of  Adversity;  J  and  to 
Contemplation's  sober  eye,  the  race  of  man  resembles 
the  insect  race : 

"  Brushed  by  the  hand  of  rough  mischance, 
Or  chilled  by  age,  their  airy  dance 
They  leave,  in  dust  to  rest."  § 

*  Cf.  the  "  Elegy": 

"  There  at  the  foot  of  yonder  nodding  beech,"  etc. 
f  "  On  a  Distant  Prospect  of  Eton  College." 
X  "  Hymn  to  Adversity." 
§"  Ode  on  the  Spring," 


1 68  «A  History  of  English  T^omanticism. 

Will  it  be  thought  too  trifling  an  observation  that  the 
poets  of  this  group  were  mostly  bachelors  and  ^tio  ad 
hoc,  solitaries?  Thomson,  Akenside,  Shenstone,  Col- 
lins, Gray,  and  Thomas  Warton  never  married.  Dyer, 
Mason,  and  Joseph  Warton,  were  beneficed  clergymen, 
and  took  unto  themselves  wives.  The  Wartons,  to  be 
sure,  were  men  of  cheerful  and  even  convivial  habits. 
The  melancholy  which  these  good  fellows  affected  was 
manifestly  a  mere  literary  fashion.  They  were  sad 
''only  for  wantonness,"  like  the  young  gentlemen  in 
France.  ''And  so  you  have  a  garden  of  your  own," 
wrote  Gray  to  his  young  friend  Nicholls,  in  1769, 
"and  you  plant  and  transplant,  and  are  dirty  and 
amused;  are  you  not  ashamed  of  yourself?  Why,  I 
have  no  such  thing,  you  monster;  nor  ever  shall  be 
either  dirty  or  amused  as  long  as  I  live."  Gray  never 
was;  but  the  Wartons  were  easily  amused,  and 
Thomas,  by  all  accounts,  not  unfrequently  dirty,  or  at 
least  slovenly  in  his  dress,  and  careless  and  unpolished 
in  his  manners,  and  rather  inclined  to  broad  humor 
and  low  society. 

Romantically  speaking,  the  work  of  these  Miltonic 
lyrists  marks  an  advance  upon  that  of  the  descriptive 
and  elegiac  poets,  Thomson,  Akenside,  Dyer,  and 
Shenstone.  Collins  is  among  the  choicest  of  English 
lyrical  poets.  There  is  a  flute-like  music  in  his  best 
odes — such  as  the  one  "To  Evening,"  and  the  one 
written  in  1746 — "How  sleep  the  brave,"  which  are 
sweeter,  more  natural,  and  more  spontaneous  than 
Gray's.  "The  Muse  gave  birth  to  Collins,"  says 
Swinburne;  "  she  did  but  give  suck  to  Gray."  Col- 
lins "  was  a  solitary  song-bird  among  many  more  or 
less  excellent  pipers  and  pianists.     He  could  put  more 


The  [Miltonic  Group.  169 

spirit  of  color  into  a  single  stroke,  more  breath  of 
music  into  a  single  note,  than  could  all  the  rest  of  the 
generation  into  all  the  labors  of  their  lives."*  Col- 
lins, like  Gray,  was  a  Greek  scholar,  and  had  projected 
a  history  of  the  revival  of  letters.  There  is  a  classical 
quality  in  his  verse — not  classical  in  the  eighteenth- 
century  sense — but  truly  Hellenic;  a  union,  as  in 
Keats,  of  Attic  form  v^^ith  romantic  sensibility;  though 
in  Collins,  more  than  in  Keats,  the  warmth  seems  to 
come  from  without;  the  statue  of  a  nymph  flushed 
with  sunrise.  "  Collins,"  says  Gosse,  "  has  the  touch 
of  a  sculptor;  his  verse  is  clearly  cut  and  direct:  it  is 
marble  pure,  but  also  marble  cold."f  Lowell,  how- 
ever, thinks  that  Collins  ''was  the  first  to  bring  back 
into  poetry  something  of  the  antique  flavor,  and  found 
again  the  long-lost  secret  of  being  classically  elegant 
without  being  pedantically  cold."  | 

These  estimates  are  given  for  what  they  are  worth. 
The  coldness  which  is  felt — or  fancied — in  some  of 
Collins'  poetry  comes  partly  from  the  abstractness  of 
his  subjects  and  the  artificial  style  which  he  inherited^ 
in  common  with  all  his  generation.  Many  of  his  odes 
are  addressed  to  Fear,  Pity,  Mercy,  Liberty,  and  simi- 
lar abstractions.  The  pseudo-Pindaric  ode,  is,  in 
itself,  an  exotic;  and,  as  an  art  form,  is  responsible  for 
some  of  the  most  tumid  compositions  in  the  history  of 
English  verse.  Collins'  most  current  ode,  though  by 
no  means  his  best  one,  "The  Passions,"  abounds  in 
those  personifications  which,  as  has  been  said,  consti- 
tuted,  in  eighteenth-century  poetry,  a  sort  of  feeble 

*  "  Ward's  English  Poets,"  Vol.  III.  pp.  278-82. 
f  "  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,"  p.  233. 
I  Essay  on  "  Pope." 


17°  c//  History  of  English  'T^omanticism. 

mythology:  "wan  Despair,"  "dejected  Pity," 
"brown  Exercise,"  and  "Music  sphere-descended 
maid."  It  was  probably  the  allegorical  figures  in  Mil- 
ton's "  L'Allegro  "  and  "  II  Penseroso,"  "Sport  that 
wrinkled  care  derides,"  "spare  Fast  that  oft  with 
gods  doth  diet,"  etc.,  that  gave  a  new  lease  of  life  to 
this  obsoles6ent  machinery  which  the  romanticists 
ought  to  have  abandoned  to  the  Augustan  schools. 

The  most  interesting  of  Collins'  poems,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  these  inquiries,  is  his  "Ode  on  the 
Popular  Superstitions  of  the  Highlands  of  Scotland. " 
This  was  written  in  1749,  but  as  it  remained  in  manu- 
script till  1788,  it  was  of  course  without  influence  on 
the  minds  of  its  author's  contemporaries.  It  had  been 
left  unfinished,  and  some  of  the  printed  editions  con- 
tained interpolated  stanzas  which  have  since  been 
weeded  away.  Inscribed  to  Mr.  John  Home,  the  au- 
thor of  "  Douglas,"  its  purpose  was  to  recommend  to 
him  the  Scottish  fairy  lore  as  a  fit  subject  for  poetry. 
Collins  justifies  the  selection  of  such  "  false  themes  " 
by  the  example  of  Spenser,  of  Shakspere,  (in  "Mac- 
beth "),  and  of  Tasso 

"  — whose  undoubting  mind 
Believed  the  magic  wonders  which  he  sung." 

He  mentions,  as  instances  of  popular  beliefs  that  have 
poetic  capabilities,  the  kelpie,  the  will-o'-the-wisp, 
and  second  sight.  He  alludes  to  the  ballad  of  "  Willie 
Drowned  in  Yarrow,"  and  doubtless  with  a  line  of 
"The  Seasons"  running  in  his  head,*  conjures  Home 
to  "  forget  not  Kilda's  race,"  who  live  on  the  eggs  of 
the   solan  goose,  whose  only  prospect  is  the  wintry 

*See  anie,  p.  114. 


The  DAiltoyiic  Group.  171 

main,  and  among  whose  cliffs  the  bee  is  never  heard  to 
murmur.  Perhaps  the  most  imaginative  stanza  is  the 
ninth,  referring  to  the  Hebrides,  the  chapel  of  St. 
Flannan  and  the  graves  of  the  Scottish,  Irish,  and 
Norwegian  kings  in  Icolmkill: 

"  Unbounded  is  thy  range  ;  with  varied  skill 

Thy  muse  may,  like  those  feathery  tribes  which  spring 
From  their  rude  rocks,  extend  her  skirting  wing, 

Round  the  moist  marge  of  each  cold  Hebrid  isle, 
To  that  hoar  pile  which  still  its  ruins  shows  ; 

In  whose  small  vaults  a  pygmy  folk  is  found, 
Whose  bones  the  delver  with  his  spade  upthrows, 

And  culls  them,  wondering,  from  the  hallowed  ground  ; 

Or  thither,  where,  beneath  the  showery  west. 
The  mighty  kings  of  three  fair  realms  are  laid ; 

Once  foes,  perhaps,  together  now  they  rest, 
No  slaves  revere  them  and  no  wars  invade. 

Yet  frequent  now  at  midnight's  solemn  hour. 
The  rifted  mounds  their  yawning  cells  unfold. 

And  forth  the  monarchs  stalk  with  sovereign  power, 
In  pageant  robes,  and  wreathed  with  sheeny  gold, 
And  on  their  twilight  tombs  aerial  council  hold." 

Collins'  work  was  all  done  by  1749;  for  though  he 
survived  ten  years  longer,  his  mind  was  in  eclipse. 
He  was  a  lover  and  student  of  Shakspere,  and  when 
the  Wartons  paid  him  a  last  visit  at  the  time  of  his 
residence  with  his  sister  in  the  cloisters  of  Chichester 
Cathedral,  he  told  Thomas  that  he  had  discovered  the 
source  of  the  ''  Tempest,"  in  a  novel  called  '*  Aurelio 
and  Isabella,"  printed  in  1588  in  Spanish,  Italian, 
French,  and  English.  No  such  novel  has  been  found, 
and  it  was  seemingly  a  figment  of  Collins'  disordered 
fancy.  During  a  lucid  interval  in  the  course  of  this 
visit,  he  read  to  the  Wartons,  from  the  manuscript, 


172  z/1  History  of  English  '^manticism. 

his  "Ode  on  the  Superstitions  of  the  Scottish  High- 
lands ";  and  also  a  poem  which  is  lost,  entitled,  '*  The 
Bell  of  Arragon,"  founded  on  the  legend  of  the  great 
bell  of  Saragossa  that  tolled  of  its  own  accord  when- 
ever a  king  of  Spain  was  dying. 

Johnson  was  also  a  friend  of  Collins,  and  spoke  of 
him  kindly  in  his  "  Lives  of  the  Poets,"  though  he 
valued  his  writings  little.  "He  had  employed  his 
mind  chiefly  upon  works  of  fiction  and  subjects  of 
fancy;  and  by  indulging  some  peculiar  habits  of 
thought,  was  eminently  delighted  with  those  flights 
of  imagination  which  pass  the  bounds  of  nature,  and 
to  which  the  mind  is  reconciled  only  by  a  passive 
acquiescence  in  popular  traditions.  He  loved  fairies, 
genii,  giants,  and  monsters;  he  delighted  to  rove 
through  the  meanders  of  enchantment,  to  gaze  on  the 
magnificence  of  golden  palaces,  to  repose  by  the 
water-falls  of  Elysian  gardens.  This  was,  however, 
the  character  rather  of  his  inclination  than  his  genius; 
the  grandeur  of  wildness  and  the  novelty  of  extrava- 
gance were  always  desired  by  him,  but  were  not  always 
attained." * 

Thomas  Gray  is  a  much  more  important  figure  than 
Collins  in  the  intellectual  history  of  his  generation; 
but  this  superior  importance  does  not  rest  entirely  upon 
his  verse,  which  is  hardly  more  abundant  than  Collins', 
though  of  a  higher  finish.  His  letters,  journals,  and 
other  prose  remains,  posthumously  published,  first 
showed  how  long  an  arc  his  mind  had  subtended  on 
the  circle  of  art  and  thought.  He  was  sensitive  to  all 
fine  influences  that  were  in  the  literary  air.  One  of  the 
greatest  scholars  among  English  poets,  his  taste  was 

*"  Life  of  Collins." 


The  Dsiiltonic  Group.  173 

equal  to  his  acquisitions.  He  was  a  sound  critic  of 
poetry,  music,  architecture,  and  painting.  His  mind 
and  character  both  had  distinction;  and  if  there  was 
something  a  trifle  finical  and  old-maidish  about  his 
personality — which  led  the  young  Cantabs  on  one 
occasion  to  take  a  rather  brutal  advantage  of  his 
nervous  dread  of  fire — there  was  also  that  nice  reserve 
which  gave  to  Milton,  when  he  was  at  Cambridge,  the 
nickname  of  the  ''the  lady  of  Christ's." 

A  few  of  Gray's  simpler  odes,  the  "Ode  on  the 
Spring,"  the  "Hymn  to  Adversity"  and  the  Eton 
College  ode,  were  written  in  1742  and  printed  in 
Dodsley's  collection  in  1748.  The  "Elegy"  was 
published  in  1751;  the  two  "sister  odes,"  "The  Prog- 
ress of  Poesy"  and  "The  Bard,"  were  struck  off  from 
Horace  Walpole's  private  press  at  Strawberry  Hill 
in  1757.  Gray's  popular  fame  rests,  and  will  always 
rest,  upon  his  immortal  "Elegy."  He  himself 
denied  somewhat  impatiently  that  it  was  his  best 
poem,  and  thought  that  its  popularity  was  owing  to 
its  subject.  There  are  not  wanting  critics  of  author- 
ity, such  as  Lowell  and  Matthew  Arnold,  who  have 
pronounced  Gray's  odes  higher  poetry  than  his 
"Elegy."  "'The  Progress  of  Poesy,' "  says  Lowell, 
"overflies  all  other  English  lyrics  like  an  eagle.  .  . 
It  was  the  prevailing  blast  of  Gray's  trumpet  that, 
more  than  anything  else,  called  men  back  to  the 
legitimate  standard."*  With  all  deference  to  such 
distinguished  judges,  I  venture  to  think  that  the 
popular  instinct  on  this  point  is  right,  and  even  that 
Dr.  Johnson  is  not  so  wrong  as  usual.  Johnson  dis- 
liked   Gray   and    spoke    of   him  with    surly  injustice. 

*  Essay  on  "  Pope." 


174  <!^  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

Gray,  in  turn,  could  not  abide  Johnson,  whom  he 
called  Ursa  major.  Johnson  said  that  Gray's  odes 
were  forced  plants,  raised  in  a  hot-house,  and  poor 
plants  at  that.  ''Sir,  I  do  not  think  Gray  a  first-rate 
poet.  He  has  not  a  bold  imagination,  nor  much  com- 
mand of  words.  The  obscurity  in  which  he  has 
involved  himself  will  not  persuade  us  that  he  is 
sublime.  His  '  Elegy  in  a  Churchyard  '  has  a  happy 
selection  of  images,  but  I  don't  like  what  are  called 
his  great  things."  "He  attacked  Gray,  calling  him 
a  'dull  fellow.'  Boswell:  'I  understand  he  was  re- 
served, and  might  appear  dull  in  company;  but  surely 
he  was  not  dull  in  poetry.'  Johnson:  'Sir,  he  was 
dull  in  company,  dull  in  his  closet,  dull  everywhere. 
He  was  dull  in  a  new  way  and  that  made  many  people 
think  him  great.  He  was  a  mechanical  poet.'  He 
then  repeated  some  ludicrous  lines,  which  have  escaped 
my  memory,  and  said,  'Is  not  that  great,  like  his 
odes?'  .  .  .  '  No,  sir,  there  are  but  two  good  stanzas 
in  Gray's  poetry,  which  are  in  his  "Elegy  in  a  Country 
Churchyard."     He  then  repeated  the  stanza — 

"  '  For  who,  to  dumb  forgetfulness  a  prey,'  "  etc. 

"In  all  Gray's  odes,"  wrote  Johnson,  "there  is  a 
kind  of  cumbrous  splendor  which  we  wish  away.  .  . 
These  odes  are  marked  by  glittering  accumulations 
of  ungraceful  ornaments;  they  strike  rather  than 
please;  the  images  are  magnified  by  affectation;  the 
language  is  labored  into  harshness.  The  mind  of  the 
writer  seems  to  work  with  unnatural  violence.  .  . 
His  art  and  his  struggle  are  too  visible  and  there  is 
too  little  appearance  of  ease  and  nature.  .  .  In  the 
character  of  his  'Elegy,'  I  rejoice  to  concur  with  the 


7he  £Miltonic  Group.  175 

common  reader;  for  by  the  common  sense  of  readers 
uncorrupted  with  literary  prejudices,  after  all  the 
refinements  of  subtlety  and  the  dogmatism  of  learning, 
must  be  finally  decided  all  claims  to  poetical  honors. 
The  'Churchyard'  abounds  with  images  which  find  a 
mirror  in  every  mind,  and  with  sentiments  to  which 
every  bosom  returns  an  echo." 

There  are  noble  lines  in  Gray's  more  elaborate  odes, 
but  they  do  make  as  a  whole  that  mechanical,  artificial 
impression  of  which  Johnson  complains.  They  have 
the  same  rhetorical  ring,  the  worked-up  fervor  in 
place  of  genuine  passion,  which  was  noted  in  Collins' 
ode  "On  the  Passions."  Collins  and  Gray  were  per- 
petually writing  about  the  passions;  but  they  treated 
them  as  abstractions  and  were  quite  incapable  of 
exhibiting  them  in  action.  Neither  of  them  could 
have  written  a  ballad,  a  play,  or  a  romance.  Their 
odes  were  bookish,  literary,  impersonal,  retrospective. 
They  had  too  much  of  the  ichor  of  fancy  and  too  little 
red  blood  in  them. 

But  the  "Elegy  "is  the  masterpiece  of  this  whole 
"II  Penseroso"  school,  and  has  summed  up  for  all 
English  readers,  for  all  time,  the  poetry  of  the  tomb. 
Like  the  "Essay  on  Man,"  and  "Night  Thoughts" 
and  "  The  Grave,"  it  is  a  poem  of  the  moral-didactic 
order,  but  very  different  in  result  from  these.  Its 
moral  is  suffused  with  emotion  and  expressed  con- 
cretely. Instead  of  general  reflections  upon  the 
shortness  of  life,  the  vanity  of  ambition,  the  leveling 
power  of  death,  and  similar  commonplaces,  we  have 
the  picture  of  the  solitary  poet,  lingering  among  the 
graves  at  twilight  (hora  datur  qiiieti),  till  the  place  and 
the  hour  conspire  to  work  their  effect  upon  the  mind 


4 


176  zA  History  of  English  '^manticism. 

and  prepare  it  for  the  strain  of  meditation  that  follows. 
The  universal  appeal  of  its  subject  and  the  perfection  1 
of  its  style  have  made  the  "Elegy"  known  by  heart 
to  more  readers  than  any  other  poem  in  the  language. 
Parody  is  one  proof  of  celebrity,  if  not  of  popularity, 
and  the  "  sister  odes  "  were  presently  parodied  by 
Lloyd  and  Colman  in  an  "Ode  to  Obscurity"  and  an 
"Ode  to  Oblivion."  But  the  "Elegy"  was  more  than 
celebrated  and  more  than  popular;  it  was  the  most 
admired  and  influential  poem  of  the  generation.  The 
imitations  and  translations  of  it  are  innumerable, 
and  it  met  with  a  response  as  immediate  as  it  was 
general.*  One  effect  of  this  was  to  consecrate  the 
ten-syllabled  quatrain  to  elegiac  uses.  Mason  altered 
the  sub-title  of  his  "  Isis "  (written  in  1748)  from 
"An  Elegy"  to  "A  Monologue,"  because  it  was  "  not 
written  in  alternate  rimes,  which  since  Mr.  Gray's 
exquisite  'Elegy  in  the  Country  Church-yard'  has 
generally  obtained,  and  seems  to  be  more  suited  to 
that  species  of  poem."f  Mason's  "Elegy  written  in 
a  Church-yard  in  South  Wales"  (1787)  is,  of  course, 
in  Gray's  stanza  and,  equally  of  /;ourse,  introduces 
a  tribute  to  the  master: 

"  Yes,  had  he  paced  this  church-way  path  along, 
Or  leaned  like  me  against  this  ivied  wall, 
How  sadly  sweet  had  flowed  his  Dorian  song, 
Then  sweetest  when  it  flowed  at  Nature's  call."  % 

*  Mr.  Perry  enumerates,  among  English  imitators.  Falconer, 
T.  Warton,  James  Graeme,  Wm.  Whitehead,  John  Scott,  Henry 
Headly,  John  Henry  Moore,  and  Robert  Lovell,  "  Eighteenth 
Century  Literature,"  p.  391.  Among  foreign  imitations  Lamartine's 
"  Le  Lac  "  is  perhaps  the  most  famous. 

f  "  Mason's  Works,"  Vol.  I.  p.  179. 

Xlbid.,  Vol.  I.  p.  114. 


The  IMiltonic  Group.  lyj 

It  became  almost  de  rigueur  for  a  young  poet  to  try 
his  hand  at  a  churchyard  piece.  Thus  Richard  Cum- 
berland, the  dramatist,  in  his  "  Memoirs,"  records  the 
fact  that  when  he  was  an  undergraduate  at  Cambridge 
in  1752  he  made  his  "first  small  offering  to  the  press, 
following  the  steps  of  Gray  with  another  church-yard 
elegy,  written  on  St.  Mark's  Eve,  when,  according  to 
rural  tradition,  the  ghosts  of  those  who  are  to  die 
within  the  year  ensuing  are  seen  to  walk  at  midnight 
across  the  churchyard."*  Goldsmith  testifies  to  the 
prevalence  of  the  fashion  when,  in  his  "Life  of  Par- 
nell,"  he  says  of  that  poet's  "  Night  Piece  on  Death  "  f 
that,  "with  very  little  amendment,"  it  "might  be 
made  to  surpass  all  those  night-pieces  and  church-yard 
scenes  that  have  since  appeared."  But  in  this  opinion 
Johnson,  who  says  that  Parnell's  poem  "is  indirectly 
preferred  by  Goldsmith  to  Gray's  'Churchyard,'"  does 
not  agree;  nor  did  the  public.  J 

Gray's  correspondence  affords  a  record  of  the  prog- 
ress of  romantic  taste  for  an  entire  generation.  He 
set  out  with  classical  prepossessions — forming  his 
verse,  as  he  declared,  after  Dryden — and  ended  with 
translations  from  Welsh  and  Norse  hero-legends,  and 

*  Cf.  Keats'  unfinished  poem,"  The  Eve  of  St.  Mark." 
f  Parnell's  collected  poems  were  published  in  1722. 
X  Not  the  least  interesting  among  the  progeny  of  Gray's  "  Elegy  " 
was  "The  Indian  Burying  Ground"  of  the  American  poet,  Philip 
Freneau  (1752-1832).     Gray's  touch  is  seen  elsewhere  in  Freneau, 
e.  g.,  in  "  The  Deserted  Farm-house." 

"Once  in  the  bounds  of  this  sequestered  room 

Perhaps  some  swain  nocturnal  courtship  made  : 
Perhaps  some  Sherlock  mused  amid  the  gloom, 
Since  Love  and  Death  forever  seek  the  shade." 


178  nA  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

with  an  admiration  for  Ossian  and  Scotch  ballads.  In 
1739  he  went  to  France  and  Italy  with  Horace  Wal- 
pole.  He  was  abroad  three  years,  though  in  1741  he 
quarreled  with  Walpole  at  Florence,  separated  from 
him  and  made  his  way  home  alone  in  a  leisurely  man- 
ner. Gray  is  one  of  the  first  of  modern  travelers  to 
speak  appreciatively  of  Gothic  architecture,  and  of  the 
scenery  of  the  Alps,  and  to  note  those  strange  and 
characteristic  aspects  of  foreign  life  which  we  now  call 
picturesque,  and  to  which  every  itinerary  and  guide- 
book draws  attention,  Addison,  who  was  on  his 
travels  forty  years  before,  was  quite  blind  to  such 
matters.  Not  that  he  was  without  the  feeling  of  the 
sublime:  he  finds,  e.  g.,  an  "agreeable  horror"  in  the 
prospect  of  a  storm  at  sea.*  But  he  wrote  of  his  pas- 
sage through  Switzerland  as  a  disagreeable  and  even 
frightful  experience:  "a  very  troublesome  journey 
over  the  Alps.  My  head  is  still  giddy  with  mountains 
and  precipices;  and  you  can't  imagine  how  much  I  am 
pleased  with  the  sight  of  a  plain." 

"  Let  any  one  reflect,"  says  the  Spectator, \  "  on  the 
disposition  of  mind  he  finds  in  himself  at  his  first 
entrance  into  the  Pantheon  at  Rome,  and  how  his 
imagination  is  filled  with  something  great  and  amazing; 
and,  at  the  same  time,  consider  how  little,  in  propor- 
tion, he  is  affected  with  the  inside  of  a  Gothic  cathe- 
dral, though  it  be  five  times  larger  than  the  other; 
which  can  arise  from  nothing  else  but  the  greatness  of 
the  manner  in  the  one,  and  the  meanness  in  the 
other."! 

*  Spectator,  No.  489, 

f  No.  415. 

X  John  Hill  Burton,  in  his  '•  Reign  of  Queen  Anne  "  gives  a  pas- 


The  €Miltonic  Group.  179 

Gray  describes  the  cathedral  at  Rheims  as  "a  vast 
Gothic  building  of  a  surprising  beauty  and  lightness^ 
all  covered  over  with  a  profusion  of  little  statues  and 
other  ornaments  ";  and  the  cathedral  at  Siena,  which 
Addison  had  characterized  as  "barbarous,"  and  as  an 
instance  of  "  false  beauties  and  affected  ornaments," 
Gray  commends  as  "labored  with  a  Gothic  niceness 
and  delicacy  in  the  old-fashioned  way."  It  must  be 
acknowledged  that  these  are  rather  cold  praises,  but 
Gray  was  continually  advancing  in  his  knowledge  of 
Gothic  and  his  liking  for  it.  Later  in  life  he  became 
something  of  an  antiquarian  and  virtuoso.  He  corre- 
sponded with  Rev.  Thomas  Wharton,  about  stained  glass 
and  paper  hangings,  which  Wharton,  who  was  refitting 
his  house  in  the  Gothic  taste,  had  commissioned  Gray 
to  buy  for  him  of  London  dealers.  He  describes,  for 
Wharton's  benefit,  Walpole's  new  bedroom  at  Straw- 
berry Hill  as  "  in  the  best  taste  of  anything  he  has  yet 
done,  and  in  your  own  Gothic  way";  and  he  advises 
his  correspondent  as  to  the  selection  of  patterns  for 
staircases  and  arcade  work.  There  was  evidently  a 
great  stir  of  curiosity  concerning  Strawberry  Hill  in 
Gray's  coterie,  and  a  determination  to  be  Gothic  at  all 

sage  from  a  letter  of  one  Captain  Burt,  superintendent  of  certain 
road-making  operations  in  the  Scotch  Highlands,  by  way  of  showing 
how  very  modern  a  person  Carlyle's  picturesque  tourist  is.  The  cap- 
tain describes  the  romantic  scenery  of  the  glens  as  "  horrid  pros- 
pects." It  was  considerably  later  in  the  century  that  Dr.  Johnson 
said,  in  answer  to  Boswell's  timid  suggestion  that  Scotland  had  a  great 
many  noble  wild  prospects,  "  I  believe,  sir,  you  have  a  great  many. 
Norway,  too,  has  noble  wild  prospects,  and  Lapland  is  remarkable  for 
prodigious  noble  wild  prospects.  But,  sir,  let  me  tell  you,  the 
noblest  prospect  which  a  Scotchman  ever  sees  is  the  high-road  that 
leads  him  to  England." 


i8o  iA  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

hazards;  and  the  poet  felt  obliged  to  warn  his  friends 
that  zeal  should  not  outrun  discretion.  He  writes  to 
Wharton  in  1754:  "I  rejoice  to  find  you  at  last  settled 
to  your  heart's  content,  and  delight  to  hear  you  talk 
of  giving  your  house  some  Gothic  ornaments  already. 
If  you  project  anything,  I  hope  it  will  be  entirely 
within  doors;  and  don't  let  me  (when  I  come  gaping 
into  Coleman  Street)  be  directed  to  the  gentleman  at 
the  ten  pinnacles,  or  with  the  church  porch  at  his 
door."  Again,  to  the  same  (1761):  "It  is  mere 
pedantry  in  Gothicism  to  stick  to  nothing  but  altars  and 
tombs,  and  there  is  no  end  to  it,  if  we  are  to  sit  upon 
nothing  but  coronation  chairs,  nor  drink  out  of  noth- 
ing but  chalices  or  flagons."  Writing  to  Mason  in 
1758  about  certain  incongruities  in  one  of  the  latter's 
odes,  he  gives  the  following  Doresque  illustration  of 
his  point.  "  If  you  should  lead  me  into  a  superb 
Gothic  building,  with  a  thousand  clustered  pillars,  each 
of  them  half  a  mile  high,  the  walls  all  covered  with 
fret-work,  and  the  windows  full  of  red  and  blue  saints 
that  had  neither  head  nor  tail,  and  I  should  find  the 
Venus  de  Medici  in  person  perked  up  in  a  long  niche 
over  the  high  altar,  as  naked  as  she  was  born,  do  you 
think  it  would  raise  or  damp  my  devotions?"*  He 
made  it  a  favorite  occupation  to  visit  and  take  draw- 
ings from  celebrated  ruins  and  the  great  English 
cathedrals,  particularly  those  in  the  Cambridge  fens, 
Ely  and  Peterboro'.     These  studies  he   utilized  in  a 

*See  also  Gray's  letter  to  Rev.  James  Brown  (1763)  inclosing  a 
drawing,  in  reference  to  a  small  ruined  chapel  at  York  Minster  ;  and 
a  letter  (about  1765)  to  Jas.  Bentham,  Prebendary  of  Ely,  whose 
"Essay  on  Gothic  Architecture"  had  been  wrongly  attributed  to 
Gray. 


The  zMiltonic  Group.  i8i 

short  essay  on  Norman  architecture,  first  published  by 
Mitford  in  1814,  and  incorrectly  entitled  '*  Architectura 
Gothica." 

Reverting  to  his  early  letters  from  abroad  one  is 
struck  by  the  anticipation  of  the  modern  attitude,  in 
his  description  of  a  visit  to  the  Grande  Chartreuse, 
which  he  calls  "one  of  the  most  solemn,  the  most 
romantic,  and  the  most  astonishing  scenes."  *  *'  I  do 
not  remember  to  have  gone  ten  paces  without  an  ex- 
clamation that  there  was  no  restraining.  Not  a  preci- 
pice, not  a  torrent,  not  a  cliff,  but  is  pregnant  with 
religion  and  poetry.  .  .  One  need  not  have  a  very 
fantastic  imagination  to  see  spirits  there  at  noonday."  f 
Walpole's  letter  of  about  the  same  date,  also  to  West,  J 
is  equally  ecstatic.  It  is  written  "  from  a  hamlet  among 
the  mountains  of  Savoy.  .  .  Here  we  are,  the  lonely 
lords  of  glorious  desolate  prospects.  .  .  But  the 
road,  West,  the  road!  Winding  round  a  prodigious 
mountain,  surrounded  with  others,  all  shagged  with 
hanging  woods,  obscured  with  pines,  or  lost  in  clouds! 
Below  a  torrent  breaking  through  cliffs,  and  tumbling 
through  fragments  of  rocks!  .  .  .  Now  and  then 
an  old  foot  bridge,  with  a  broken  rail,  a  leaning 
cross,  a  cottage  or  the  ruin  of  an  hermitage!  This 
sounds  too  bombast  and  too  romantic  to  one  that  has 
not  seen  it,  too  cold  for  one  that  has."  Or  contrast 
with  Addison's  Italian  letters  passages  like  these, 
which  foretoken  Rogers  and  Byron,  We  get  nothing 
so  sympathetic  till  at  least  a  half  century  later.     **It 

*To  Mrs.  Dorothy  Gray,  1739. 
f  To  Richard  West,  1739. 

JGray,  Walpole,  and  West  had  been  schoolfellows  and  intimates  at 
Eton. 


1 82  tA  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

is  the  most  beautiful  of  Italian  nights.  .  .  There  is  a 
moon!  There  are  stars  for  you!  Do  not  you  hear 
the  fountain?  Do  not  you  smell  the  orange  flowers? 
That  building  yonder  is  the  convent  of  St.  Isidore; 
and  that  eminence  with  the  cypress-tress  and  pines 
upon  it,  the  top  of  Mt.  Quirinal."  *  ''The  Neapoli- 
tans work  till  evening:  then  take  their  lute  or  guitar 
and  walk  about  the  city,  or  upon  the  sea  shore  with  it, 
to  enjoy  the  fresco.  One  sees  their  little  brown  chil- 
dren jumping  about  stark  naked  and  the  bigger  ones 
dancing  with  castanets,  while  others  play  on  the  cym- 
bal to  them."  f  "  Kennst  du  das  Land,"  then  already? 
The 

"  small  voices  and  an  old  guitar, 
Winning  their  way  to  an  unguarded  heart "  ? 

And  then,  for  a  prophecy  of  Scott,  read  the  description 
of  Netley  Abbey,  J  in  a  letter  to  Nicholls  in  1764. 
"My  ferryman,"  writes  Gray  in  a  letter  to  Brown 
about  the  same  ruin,  "assured  me  that  he  would  not 
go  near  it  in  the  night  time  for  all  the  world,  though 
he  knew  much  money  had  been  found  there.  The  sun 
was  all  too  glaring  and  too  full  of  gauds  for  such  a 
scene,  which  ought  to  be  visited  only  in  the  dusk  of 
the  evening." 

"  If  thou  woulds't  view  fair  Melrose  aright 
Go  visit  it  by  the  pale  moonlight, 
For  the  gay  beams  of  lightsome  day 
Gild,  but  to  flout,  the  ruins,  Gray." 

*To  West,  1740. 

f  To  Mrs.  Dorothy  Gray,  1740. 

Ij.  "  Pearch's  Collection  "  (VII.  138)  gives  an  elegiac  quatrain  poem 
on  "  The  Ruins  of  Netley  Abbey,"  by  a  poet  with  the  suggestive  name 
of  George  Keate;  and  "The  Alps,"  in  heavy  Thomsonian  blank 
verse  (VII.  107)  by  the  same  hand. 


u 


The  CMiltonic  Group.  183 

In  1765  Gray  visited  the  Scotch  Highlands  and  sent 
enthusiastic  histories  of  his  trip  to  Wharton  and 
Mason.  "Since  I  saw  the  Alps,  I  have  seen  nothing 
sublime  till  now."  "The  Lowlands  are  worth  seeing 
once,  but  the  mountains  are  ecstatic,  and  ought  to  be 
visited  in  pilgrimage  once  a  year.  None  but  those 
monstrous  creatures  of  God  know  how  to  join  so 
much  beauty  with  so  much  horror.  A  fig  for  your 
poets,  painters,  gardeners,  and  clergymen  that  have 
not  been  among  them." 

Again  in  1770,  the  year  before  his  death,  he  spent 
six  weeks  on  a  ramble  through  the  western  counties, 
descending  the  Wye  in  a  boat  for  forty  miles,  and 
visiting  among  other  spots  which  the  muse  had  then, 
or  has  since,  made  illustrious,  Hagley  and  the 
Leasowes,  the  Malvern  Hills  and  Tintern  Abbey.  But 
the  most  significant  of  Gray's  "Lilliputian  travels," 
was  his  tour  of  the  Lake  Country  in  1769.  Here  he 
was  on  ground  that  has  since  become  classic;  and  the 
lover  of  Wordsworth  encounters  with  a  singular  inter- 
est, in  Gray's  "  Journal  in  the  Lakes,"  written  nearly 
thirty  years  before  the  "  Lyrical  Ballads,"  names  like 
Grasmere,  Winander,  Skiddaw,  Helvellyn,  Derwent- 
water,  Borrowdale,  and  Lodore.  What  distinguishes 
the  entries  in  this  journal  from  contemporary  writing 
of  the  descriptive  kind  is  a  certain  intimacy  of  com- 
prehension, a  depth  of  tone  which  makes  them  seem 
like  nineteenth-century  work.  To  Gray  the  landscape 
was  no  longer  a  picture.  It  had  sentiment,  character, 
meaning,  almost  personality.  Different  weathers  and 
different  hours  of  the  day  lent  it  expressions  subtler 
than  the  poets  had  hitherto  recognized  in  the  broad, 
general  changes  of  storm  and  calm,   light  and  dark- 


i84  aA  History  of  English  l^pmanticism. 

ness,  and  the  successions  of  the  seasons.  He  heard 
Nature  when  she  whispered,  as  well  as  when  she  spoke 
out  loud.  Thomson  could  not  have  written  thus,  nor 
Shenstone,  nor  even,  perhaps,  Collins.  But  almost 
any  man  of  cultivation  and  sensibility  can  write  so 
now;  or,  if  not  so  well,  yet  with  the  same  accent.  A 
passage  or  two  will  make  my  meaning  clearer. 

''To  this  second  turning  I  pursued  my  way  about 
four  miles  along  its  borders  [Ulswater],  beyond  a  vil- 
lage scattered  among  trees  and  called  Water  Mallock, 
in  a  pleasant,  grave  day,  perfectly  calm  and  warm, 
but  without  a  gleam  of  sunshine.  Then,  the  sky 
seeming  to  thicken,  the  valley  to  grow  more  desolate, 
and  evening  drawing  on,  I  returned  by  the  way  I  came 
to  Penrith.  .  .  While  I  was  here,  a  little  shower  fell, 
red  clouds  came  marching  up  the  hills  from  the  east, 
and  part  of  a  bright  rainbow  seemed  to  rise  along  the 
side  of  Castle  Hill.  .  .  The  calmness  and  brightness 
of  the  evening,  the  roar  of  the  waters,  and  the  thump- 
ing of  huge  hammers  at  an  iron  forge  not  far  distant, 
made  it  a  singular  walk.  .  .  In  the  evening  walked 
alone  down  to  the  lake  after  sunset  and  saw  the  solemn 
coloring  of  night  draw  on,  the  last  gleam  of  sunshine 
fading  away  on  the  hilltops,  the  deep  serene  of  the 
waters,  and  the  long  shadows  of  the  mountains  thrown 
across  them  till  they  nearly  touched  the  hithermost 
shore.  At  distance  heard  the  murmur  of  many  water- 
falls not  audible  in  the  day-time.*  Wished  for  the 
moon,  but  she  was  dark  to  me  and  silent,  hid  in  her 
vacant  inter-lunar  cave."  f 

*  "  A  soft  and  lulling  sound  is  heard 
Of  streams  inaudible  by  da^." 
—  T/i^  White  Doe  of  Rylstone,   Wordsworth. 
\  "  Samson  Agonistes." 


The  cMiltonic  Group.  185 

"  It  is  only  within  a  few  years,"  wrote  Joseph  Warton 
in  1782,  ''that  the  picturesque  scenes  of  our  own 
country,  our  lakes,  mountains,  cascades,  caverns,  and 
castles,  have  been  visited  and  described."*  It  was  in 
this  very  year  that  William  Gilpin  published  his  "Ob- 
servations on  the  River  Wye,"  from  notes  taken 
upon  a  tour  in  1770.  This  was  the  same  year  when 
Gray  made  his  tour  of  the  Wye,  and  hearing  that 
Gilpin  had  prepared  a  description  of  the  region,  he 
borrowed  and  read  his  manuscript  in  June,  1771,  a  few 
weeks  before  his  own  death.  These  "  Observations  " 
were  the  first  of  a  series  of  volumes  by  Gilpin  on  the 
scenery  of  Great  Britain,  composed  in  a  poetic  and 
somewhat  over-luxuriant  style,  illustrated  by  drawings 
in  aquatinta,  and  all  described  on  the  title  page  as 
"  Relative  chiefly  to  Picturesque  Beauty."  They  had 
great  success,  and  several  of  them  were  translated 
into  German  and  French,  f 

*  "  Essay  on  Pope"  (5th  ed.).  Vol.  II.  p.  180. 

f  These  were,  in  order  of  publication:  "  The  Mountains  and  Lakes 
of  Cumberland  and  Westmoreland"  (2  vols.),  1789;  "The  High- 
lands of  Scotland,"  1789;  "Remarks  on  Forest  Scenery,"  1791; 
"  The  Western  Parts  of  England  and  the  Isle  of  Wight,"  1798; 
"  The  Coasts  of  Hampshire,"  etc.,  1804;  "Cambridge,  Norfolk,  Suf- 
folk, Essex,"  etc.,  1809.  The  last  two  were  posthumously  published. 
Gilpin,  who  was  a  prebendary  of  Salisbury,  died  in  1804.  Pearch's 
"Collection"  (VII,  23)  has  "  A  Descriptive  Poem,"  on  the  Lake 
Country,  in  octosyllabic  couplets,  introducing  Keswick,  Borrowdale, 
Dovedale,  Lodore,  Derwentwater,  and  other  familiar  localities. 


CHAPTER   VI. 
Zbc  Scbool  of  IClarton. 

In  the  progress  of  our  inquiries,  hitherto,  we  have 
met  with  little  that  can  be  called  romantic  in  the  nar- 
rowest sense.  Though  the  literary  movement  had 
already  begun  to  take  a  retrospective  turn,  few  dis- 
tinctly mediaeval  elements  were  yet  in  evidence. 
Neither  the  literature  of  the  monk  nor  the  literature 
of  the  knight  had  suffered  resurrection.  It  was  not 
until  about  1760  that  writers  began  to  gravitate  de- 
cidedly toward  the  Middle  Ages.  The  first  peculiarly 
mediaeval  type  that  contrived  to  secure  a  foothold  in 
eighteenth-century  literature  was  the  hermit,  a  figure 
which  seems  to  have  had  a  natural  attraction,  not  only 
for  romanticizing  poets  like  Shenstone  and  Collins, 
but  for  the  whole  generation  of  verse  writers  from 
Parnell  to  Goldsmith,  Percy  and  Beattie — each  of  whom 
composed  a  *'  Hermit  " — and  even  for  the  authors  of 
**Rasselas"  and  "Tom  Jones,"  in  whose  fictions  he 
becomes  a  stock  character,  as  a  fountain  of  wisdom 
and  of  moral  precepts,  f 

f  Dr.  Johnson  had  his  laugh  at  this  popular  person: 
"  '  Hermit  hoar,  in  solemn  cell 
Wearing  out  life's  evening  gray. 
Strike  thy  bosom,  sage,  and  tell 
What  is  bliss,  and  which  the  way  ?' 

"  Thus  I  spoke,  and  speaking  sighed. 
Scarce  suppressed  the  starting  tear: 
When  the  hoary  sage  replied, 
'  Come,  my  lad,  and  drink  some  beer.  * " 
186 


The  School  of  IVarton.  187 

A  literary  movement  which  reverts  to  the  past  for 
its  inspiration  is  necessarily  also  a  learned  movement. 
Antiquarian  scholarship  must  lead  the  way.  The  pic- 
ture of  an  extinct  society  has  to  be  pieced  together 
from  the  fragments  at  hand,  and  this  involves  special 
research.  So  long  as  this  special  knowledge  remains 
the  exclusive  possession  of  professional  antiquaries 
like  Gough,  Hearne,  Bentham,  Perry,  Grose,*  it  bears 
no  fruit  in  creative  literature.  It  produces  only  local 
histories,  surveys  of  cathedrals  and  of  sepulchral 
monuments,  books  about  Druidic  remains,  Roman 
walls  and  coins,  etc.,  etc.  It  was  only  when  men  of 
imagination  and  of  elegant  tastes  were  enlisted  in 
such  pursuits  that  the  dry  stick  of  antiquarianism  put 
forth  blossoms.  The  poets,  of  course,  had  to  make 
studies  of  their  own,  to  decipher  manuscripts,  learn 
Old  English,  visit  ruins,  collect  ballads  and  ancient 
armor,  familiarize  themselves  with  terms  of  heraldry, 
architecture,  chivalry,  ecclesiology  and  feudal  law, 
and  in  other  such  ways  inform  and  stimulate  their  im- 
aginations. It  was  many  years  before  the  joint  labors 
of  scholars  and  poets  had  reconstructed  an  image  of 
mediasval  society,  sharp  enough  in  outline  and  brilliant 
enough  in  color  to  impress  itself  upon  the  general 
public.  Scott,  indeed,  was  the  first  to  popularize^ 
romance;  mainly,  no  doubt,  because  of  the  greater/ 
power  and  fervor  of  his  imagination;  but  also,  in  part,  >^  ; 
because  an  ampler  store  of  materials  had  been  already 
accumulated   when   he   began  work.     He  had  fed  on  \ 

*"  Grose's  Antiquities  of  Scotland"  was  published  in  1791,  and 
Burns  wrote  "Tarn  o'  Shanter"  to  accompany  the  picture  of  Kirk 
Alloway  in  this  work.  See  his  poem,  "  On  the  late  Captain  Grose's 
Peregrinations  through  Scotland." 


i88  <v^  History  of  English  l^pmanticism. 

Percy's  "  Reliques  "  in  boyhood;  through  Coleridge, 
his  verse  derives  from  Chatterton;  and  the  line  of 
Gothic  romances  which  starts  with  "The  Castle  of 
Otranto  "  is  remotely  responsible  for  "Ivanhoe"  and 
"  The  Talisman."  But  Scott  too  was,  like  Percy  and 
Walpole,  a  virtuoso  and  collector;  and  the  vast  appa- 
ratus of  notes  and  introductory  matter  in  his  metrical 
tales,  and  in  the  Waverley  novels,  shows  how  necessary 
it  was  for  the  romantic  poet  to  be  his  own  antiquary. 

As  was  to  be  expected,  the  zeal  of  the  first  roman- 
ticists was  not  always  a  zeal  according  to  knowledge, 
and  the  picture  of  the  Middle  Age  which  they  painted 
was  more  of  a  caricature  than  a  portrait.  A  large 
share  of  mediaeval  literature  was  inaccessible  to  the 
general  reader.  Much  of  it  was  still  in  manuscript. 
Much  more  of  it  was  in  old  and  rare  printed  copies, 
broadsides  and  black-letter  folios,  the  treasures  of 
great  libraries  and  of  jealously  hoarded  private  collec- 
tions. Much  was  in  dialects  little  understood — for- 
gotten forms  of  speech— Old  French,  Middle  High 
German,  Old  Norse,  mediaeval  Latin,  the  ancient  Erse 
and  Cymric  tongues,  Anglo-Saxon.  There  was  an 
almost  total  lack  of  apparatus  for  the  study  of  this 
literature.  Helps  were  needed  in  the  shape  of  modern 
reprints  of  scarce  texts,  bibliographies,  critical  editions, 
translations,  literary  histories  and  manuals,  glossaries 
of  archaic  words,  dictionaries  and  grammars  of  obso- 
lete languages.  These  were  gradually  supplied  by 
working  specialists  in  different  fields  of  investigation. 
Every  side  of  mediaeval  life  has  received  illustration 
in  its  turn.  Works  like  Tyrwhitt's  edition  of  Chaucer 
(1775-78);  the  collections  of  mediaeval  romances 
by    Ellis    (1805),   Ritson  (1802),    and    Weber    (1810); 


The  School  of  War  ton.  189 

Nares'  and  Halliwell's  "Archaic  Glossary  "  (1822-46), 
Carter's  ''Specimens  of  Ancient  Sculpture  and  Paint- 
ings "  (1780-94),  Scott's  '*  Demonology  and  Witch- 
craft" (1830),  Hallam's  "Middle  Ages"  (1818), 
Meyrick's  "Ancient  Armour"  (1824),  Lady  Guest's 
"Mabinogion  "  (1838),  the  publications  of  numberless 
individual  scholars  and  of  learned  societies  like  the 
Camden,  the  Spenser,  the  Percy,  the  Chaucer,  the 
Early  English  Text,  the  Roxburgh  Club,— to  mention 
only  English  examples,  taken  at  random,  and  separated 
from  each  other  by  wide  intervals  of  time, — are  in- 
stances of  the  labors  by  which  mediaeval  life  has  been 
made  familiar  to  all  who  might  choose  to  make  ac- 
quaintance with  it. 

The  history  of  romanticism,  after  the  impulse  had 
once  been  given,  is  little  else  than  a  record  of  the 
steps  by  which,  one  after  another,  new  features  of 
that  vast  and  complicated  scheme  of  things  which  we 
loosely  call  the  Middle  Ages  were  brought  to  light 
and  made  available  as  literary  material.  The  picture 
was  constantly  having  fresh  details  added  to  it,  nor  is 
there  any  reason  to  believe  that  it  is  finished  yet. 
Some  of  the  finest  pieces  of  mediaeval  work  have  only 
within  the  last  few  years  been  brought  to  the  attention 
of  the  general  reader;  e.  g.,  the  charming  old  French 
story  in  prose  and  verse,  "Aucassin  et  Nicolete,"  and 
the  fourteenth-century  English  poem,  "The  Perle." 
The  future  holds  still  other  phases  of  romanticism  in 
reserve;  the  Middle  Age  seems  likely  to  be  as  inex- 
haustible in  novel  sources  of  inspiration  as  classical 
antiquity  has  already  proved  to  be.  The  past  belongs 
to  the  poet  no  less  than  the  present,  and  a  great  part 
of  the  literature  of  every  generation  will   always    be 


igo  ^  History  of  English  l^omantidsm. 

retrospective.  The  tastes  and  preferences  of  the 
individual  artist  will  continue  to  find  a  wide  field  for 
selection  in  the  rich  quarry  of  Christian  and  feudal 
Europe. 

It  is  not  a  little  odd  that  the  book  which  first 
aroused,  in  modern  Europe,  an  interest  in  Norse 
mythology  should  have  been  written  by  a  Frenchman. 
This  was  the  *'  Introduction  a  I'Histoire  de  Danne- 
marc,"  published  in  1755  by  Paul  Henri  Mallet,  a 
native  of  Geneva  and  sometime  Professor  of  Belles 
Lettres  in  the  Royal  University  at  Copenhagen.  The 
work  included  also  a  translation  of  the  first  part 
of  the  Younger  Edda,  with  an  abstract  of  the  second 
part  and  of  the  Elder  Edda,  and  versions  of  several 
Runic  poems.  It  was  translated  into  English,  in  1770, 
by  Thomas  Percy,  the  editor  of  the  "  Reliques,"  under 
the  title,  "Northern  Antiquities;  or  a  Description  of 
the  Manners,  Customs,  Religion,  and  Laws  of  the  An- 
cient Danes."  A  German  translation  had  appeared  a 
few  years  earlier  and  had  inspired  the  Schleswig-Hol- 
steiner,  Heinrich  Wilhelm  von  Gerstenberg,  to  compose 
his  "  Gedicht  eines  Skalden,"  which  introduced  the 
old  Icelandic  mythology  into  German  poetry  in  1766. 
Percy  had  published  independently  in  1763  "  Five 
Pieces  of  Runic  Poetry,  translated  from  the  Ice- 
landic Language." 

Gray  did  not  wait  for  the  English  translation  of 
Mallet's  book.  In  a  letter  to  Mason,  dated  in  1758, 
and  inclosing  some  criticisms  on  the  latter's  "  Caracta- 
cus  "  (then  in  MS.),  he  wrote:  "I  am  pleased  with 
the  Gothic  Elysium.  Do  you  think  I  am  ignorant 
about  either  that,  or  the  /le//  before,  or  the  twilight* 

*  "  Ragnarok,"  or  "  Gotterdammerung,"  the  twilight  of  the  Gods. 


The  School  of  Warton.  191 

I  have  been  there  and  have  seen  it  all  in  Mallet's 
'  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Denmark  '  (it  is  in 
French),  and  many  other  places."  It  is  a  far  cry  from 
Mallet's  "  System  of  Runic  Mythology"  to  William 
Morris'  "Sigurd  the  Volsung"  (1877),  but  to  Mallet 
belongs  the  credit  of  first  exciting  that  interest  in 
Scandinavian  antiquity  which  has  enriched  the  prose 
and  poetry  not  only  of  England  but  of  Europe  in 
general.  Gray  refers  to  him  in  his  notes  on  "The 
Descent  of  Odin,"  and  his  work  continued  to  be 
popular  authority  on  its  subject  for  at  least  half  a 
century.  Scott  cites  it  in  his  annotations  on  "The 
Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel  "  (1805). 

Gray's  studies  in  Runic  literature  took  shape  in  "The 
Fatal  Sisters  "  and  "  The  Descent  of  Odin,"  written  in 
1761,  published  in  1768.  These  were  paraphrases  of 
two  poems  which  Gray  found  in  the  "  De  Causis  Con- 
temnendse  Mortis  "  (Copenhagen,  1689)  of  Thomas 
Bartholin,  a  Danish  physician  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  The  first  of  them  describes  the  Valkyrie 
weaving  the  fates  of  the  Danish  and  Irish  warriors  in 
the  battle  of  Clontarf,  fought  in  the  eleventh  century 
between  Sigurd,  Earl  of  Orkney,  and  Brian,  King  of 
Dublin;  the  second  narrates  the  descent  of  Odin  to 
Niflheimer,  to  inquire  of  Hela  concerning  the  doom 
of  Balder,*     Gray  had  designed   these   for   the  intro- 

*  For  a  full  discussion  of  Gray's  sources  and  of  his  knowledge  of 
Old  Norse,  the  reader  should  consult  the  appendix  by  Professor 
G.  L.  Kittredge  to  Professor  W.  L.Phelps'  "  Selections  from  Gray" 
(1894,  pp.  xl-1.)  Professor  Kittredge  concludes  that  Gray  had  but 
a  slight  knowledge  of  Norse,  that  he  followed  the  Latin  of  Bar- 
tholin in  his  renderings  ;  and  that  he  probably  also  made  use  of  such 
authorities  as  Torfaeus'  "  Orcades  "  (1697),  Ole  Worm's  "  Literatura 


192  <l/1  History  of  English  l^manticism. 

ductory  chapter  of  his  projected  history  of  English 
poetry.  He  calls  them  imitations,  which  in  fact  they 
are,  rather  than  literal  renderings.  In  spite  of  a  tinge 
of  eighteenth-century  diction,  and  of  one  or  two 
Shaksperian  and  Miltonic  phrases,  the  translator 
succeeded  fairly  well  in  reproducing  the  wild  air  of  his 
originals.  His  biographer,  Mr.  Gosse,  promises  that 
"the  student  will  not  fail  ...  in  the  Gothic  pictur- 
esqueness  of  '  The  Descent  of  Odin,'  to  detect  notes 
and  phrases  of  a  more  delicate  originality  than  are  to 
be  found  even  in  his  more  famous  writings;  and  will 
dwell  with  peculiar  pleasure  on  those  passages  in  which 
Gray  freed  himself  of  the  trammels  of  an  artificial  and 
conventional  taste,  and  prophesied  of  the  new  roman- 
tic age  that  was  coming." 

Celtic  antiquity  shared  with  Gothic  in  this  newly 
aroused  interest.  Here  too,  as  in  the  phrase  about 
"the  stormy  Hebrides,"  "  Lycidas  "  seems  to  have 
furnished  the  spark  that  kindled  the  imaginations  of 
the  poets. 

"Where  were  ye,  nymphs,  when  the  remorseless  deep 
Closed  o'er  the  head  of  your  loved  Lycidas? 
For  neither  were  ye  playing  on  the  steep 

Runica"  (Copenhagen,  1636),  Dr.  George  Hickes'  monumental 
"Thesaurus"  (Oxford,  1705),  and  Robert  Sheringham's  "  De  An- 
glorum  Gentis  Origine  Disceptatio"  (1716).  Dryden's  "Miscellany 
Poems"  (1716)  has  a  verse  translation,  "  The  Waking  of  Angantyr," 
from  the  English  prose  of  Hickes,  of  a  portion  of  the  "  Hervarar 
Saga."  Professor  Kittredge  refers  to  Sir  William  Temple's  essays 
"Of  Poetry"  and  "Of  Heroic  Virtue."  "Nichols'  Anecdotes" 
(I.  116)  mentions,  as  published  in  1715,  "  The  Rudiments  of  Gram- 
mar for  the  English  Saxon  Tongue  ;  with  an  Apology  for  the  study 
of  Northern  Antiquities."  This  was  by  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Elstob,  and 
was  addressed  to  Hickes,  the  compiler  of  the  "  Thesaurus." 


The  School  of  IVarton.  193 

Where  your  old  bards,  the  famous  Druids  lie, 

Nor  on  the  shaggy  top  of  Mona  high, 

Nor  yet  where  Deva  spreads  her  wizard  stream." 

Joseph  Warton  quotes  this  passage  twice  in  his 
"  Essay  on  Pope  "  (Vol.  I.  pp.  7  and  356,  5th  ed.),  once 
to  assert  its  superiority  to  a  passage  in  Pope's 
"Pastorals":  "The  mention  of  places  remarkably 
romantic,  the  supposed  habitation  of  Druids,  bards 
and  wizards,  is  far  more  pleasing  to  the  imagination, 
than  the  obvious  introduction  of  Cam  and  Isis. " 
Another  time,  to  illustrate  the  following  suggestion: 
"I  have  frequently  wondered  that  our  modern  writers 
have  made  so  little  use  of  the  druidical  times  and  the 
traditions  of  the  old  bards.  .  .  Milton,  we  see,  was 
sensible  of  the  force  of  such  imagery,  as  we  may 
gather  from  this  short  but  exquisite  passage."  As 
further  illustrations  of  the  poetic  capabilities  of  similar 
themes,  Warton  gives  a  stanza  from  Gray's  "Bard" 
and  some  lines  from  Gilbert  West's  "Institution  of 
the  Order  of  the  Garter  "  which  describe  the  ghosts 
of  the  Druids  hovering  about  their  ruined  altars  at 
Stonehenge: 

"  — Mysterious  rows 
Of  rude  enormous  obelisks,  that  rise 
Orb  within  orb,  stupendous  monuments 
Of  artless  architecture,  such  as  now 
Oft-times  amaze  the  wandering  traveller. 
By  the  pale  moon  discerned  on  Sarum's  plain." 

He  then  inserts  two  stanzas,  in  the  Latin  of  Hickes' 
"Thesaurus,"  of  an  old  Runic  ode  preserved  by  Olaus 
Wormius  (Ole  Worm)  and  adds  an  observation  upon 
the  Scandinavian  heroes  and  their  contempt  of  death. 
Druids    and    bards    now   begin  to    abound.     Collins' 


194  t/^  History  of  English  %omantictsm. 

"Ode  on  the   Death  of   Mr.  Thomson,"  ^r.  g.,  com- 
mences with  the  line 

"  In  yonder  grave  a  Druid  lies." 

In  his  **  Ode  to  Liberty,"  he  alludes  to  the  tradition 
that  Mona,  the  druidic  stronghold,  was  long  covered 
with  an  enchantment  of  mist — work  of  an  angry- 
mermaid: 

"  Mona,  once  hid  from  those  who  search  the  main, 
"Where  thousand  elfin  shapes  abide," 

In  Thomas  Warton's  "  Pleasures  of  Melancholy," 
Contemplation  is  fabled  to  have  been  discovered,  when 
a  babe,  by  a  Druid 

"  Far  in  a  hollow  glade  of  Mona's  woods," 

and  borne  by  him  to  his  oaken  bower,  where  she 

"  — loved  to  lie 
Oft  deeply  listening  to  the  rapid  roar 
Of  wood-hung  Menai,  stream  of  Druids  old." 

Mason's  "  Caractacus  "  (1759)  was  a  dramatic  poem  on 
the  Greek  model,  with  a  chorus  of  British  bards,  and  a 
principal  Druid  for  choragus.  The  scene  is  the  sacred 
grove  in  Mona.  Mason  got  up  with  much  care  the 
descriptions  of  druidic  rites,  such  as  the  preparation  of 
the  adder-stone  and  the  cutting  of  the  mistletoe  with 
a  golden  sickle,  from  Latin  authorities  like  Pliny, 
Tacitus,  Lucan,  Strabo,  and  Suetonius.  Joseph  Warton 
commends  highly  the  chorus  on  "  Death  "  in  this  piece, 
as  well  as  the  chorus  of  bards  at  the  end  of  West's 
"  Institution  of  the  Garter."  For  the  materials  of  his 
"Bard"  Gray  had  to  go  no  farther  than  historians 
and  chroniclers  such  as  Camden,  Higden,  and  Matthew 


The  School  of  IVarton.  195 

of  Westminster,  to  all  of  whom  he  refers.  Following 
a  now  discredited  tradition,  he  represents  the  last 
survivor  of  the  Welsh  poetic  guild,  seated,  harp  in 
hand,  upon  a  crag  on  the  side  of  Snowdon,  and 
denouncing  judgment  on  Edward  I.  for  the  murder 
of  his  brothers  in  song. 

But  in  1764  Gray  was  incited,  by  the  publication  of 
Dr.  Evans'  "  Specimens,"  *  to  attempt  a  few  transla- 
tions from  the  Welsh.  The  most  considerable  of 
these  was  "  The  Triumphs  of  Owen,"  published 
among  Gray's  collected  poems  in  1768.  This  cele- 
brates the  victory  over  the  confederate  fleets  of  Ire- 
land, Denmark,  and  Normandy,  won  about  ii6oby  a 
prince  of  North  Wales,  Owen  Ap  Griffin,  "the  dragon 
son  of  Mona."  The  other  fragments  are  brief  but 
spirited  versions  of  bardic  songs  in  praise  of  fallen 
heroes:  "  Caradoc "  "Conan,"  and  "The  Death  of 
Hoel."  They  were  printed  posthumously,  though 
doubtless  composed  in  1764. 

The  scholarship  of  the  day  was  not  always  accurate 
in  discriminating  between  ancient  systems  of  religion, 
and  Gray,  in  his  letters  to  Mason  in  1758,  when 
"  Caractacus  "  was  still  in  the  works,  takes  him  to 
task  for  mixing  the  Gothic  and  Celtic  mythologies. 
He  instructs  him  that  Woden  and  his  Valhalla  belong 

*  "  Some  Specimens  of  the  Poetry  of  the  Ancient  Welsh  Bards, 
translated  into  English,"  by  Rev.  Evan  Evans,  1764.  The  speci- 
mens were  ten  in  number.  The  translations  were  in  English  prose. 
The  originals  were  printed  from  a  copy  which  Davies,  the  author  of 
the  Welsh  dictionary,  had  made  of  an  ancient  vellum  MS.  thought  to 
be  of  the  times  of  Edward  II.,  Edward  III.,  and  Henry  V.  The 
book  included  a  Latin  "  Dissertatio  de  Bardis,"  together  with  notes, 
appendices,  etc.  The  preface  makes  mention  of  Macpherson's 
recently  published  Ossianic  poems. 


196  <iA  History  af  English  %omanticism. 

to  "the  doctrine  of  the   Scalds,  not  of  the  Bards"; 
but  admits  that,  "in  that  scarcity  of  Celtic  ideas  we 
labor  under,"  it  might  be  permissible  to  borrow  from 
the  Edda,  "dropping,  however,  all  mention  of  Woden 
and   his  Valkyrian  virgins,"  and    "without   entering 
too   minutely   on  particulars";    or    "still   better,    to 
graft  any  wild  picturesque  fable,  absolutely  of  one's 
own   invention,   upon   the    Druid    stock."     But   Gray 
had  not  scrupled  to  mix  mythologies  in  "The  Bard," 
thereby    incurring    Dr.    Johnson's    censure.       "The 
weaving  of   the    winding   sheet    he   borrowed,  as    he 
owns,    from   the   northern  bards;    but  their   texture, 
however,    was    very    properly    the    work    of    female 
powers,  as  the  art  of  spinning  the  thread  of  Ufe   in 
another    mythology.       Theft    is    always    dangerous: 
Gray  has  made  weavers  of  the  slaughtered  bards,  by  a 
fiction  outrageous  and  incongruous."  *     Indeed  Mallet 
himself  had  a  very   confused  notion  of  the   relation 
of  the  Celtic  to  the  Teutonic  race.     He  speaks  con- 
stantly   of   the    old    Scandinavians   as   Celts.      Percy 
points  out  the  difference,  in  the  preface  to  his  trans- 
lation, and  makes  the  necessary  correction  in  the  text, 
where  the  word  Celtic  occurs— usually  by  substituting 
"  Gothic  and  Celtic  "  for  the  "  Celtic  "  of  the  original. 
Mason    made   his   contribution    to    Runic   literature, 
"Song  of  Harold  the  Valiant,"  a   rather  insipid  ver- 
sification of  a  passage  from  the   "  Knytlinga   Saga," 
which   had   been    rendered    by  Bartholin   into  Latin, 
from  him  into  French  by  Mallet,  and  from  Mallet  into 
English  prose  by  Percy.     Mason  designed  it  for  in- 
sertion in  the  introduction  to  Gray's  abortive  history 
of  English  poetry. 

*"  Life  of  Gray." 


The  School  of  IVarton.  197 

The  true  pioneers  of  the  mediaeval  revival  were  the 
Warton  brothers.  "The  school  of  Warton"  was  a 
term  employed,  not  without  disparaging  implications, 
by  critics  who  had  no  liking  for  antique  minstrelsy. 
Joseph  and  Thomas  Warton  were  the  sons  of  Thomas 
Warton,  vicar  of  Basingstoke,  who  had  been  a  fellow  of 
Magdalen  and  Professor  of  Poetry  at  Oxford;  which 
latter  position  was  afterward  filled  by  the  younger  of 
his  two  sons.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  a  volume 
of  verse  by  Thomas  Warton,  Sr.,  posthumously  printed 
in  1748,  includes  a  Spenserian  imitation  and  trans- 
lations of  two  passages  from  the  "Song  of  Ragner 
Lodbrog,"  an  eleventh-century  Viking,  after  the 
Latin  version  quoted  by  Sir  Wm.  Temple  in  his  essay 
"  Of  Heroic  Virtue  ";  *  so  that  the  romantic  leanings 
of  the  Warton  brothers  seem  to  be  an  instance  of 
heredity,  Joseph  was  educated  at  Winchester, — 
where  Collins  was  his  schoolfellow — and  both  of  the 
brothers  at  Oxford.  Joseph  afterward  became  head- 
master of  Winchester,  and  lived  till  1800,  surviving 
his  younger  brother  ten  years.  Thomas  was  always 
identified  with  Oxford,  where  he  resided  for  forty- 
seven  years.  He  was  appointed,  in  1785,  Camden 
Professor  of  History  in  the  university,  but  gave  no 
lectures.  In  the  same  year  he  was  chosen  to  succeed 
Whitehead,  as  Poet  Laureate.  Both  brothers  were 
men  of  a  genial,  social  temper.  Joseph  was  a  man  of 
some  elegance;  he  was  fond  of  the  company  of  young 
ladies,  went  into  general  society,  and  had  a  certain 
renown  as  a  drawing-room  wit  and  diner-out.  He 
used  to  spend  his  Christmas  vacations  in  London, 
where  he  was  a  member  of  Johnson's  literary  club. 

*See  Phelps'  "  English  Romantic  Movement,"  pp.  73,  141-42. 


198  <^  History  of  English  'T^omanticistn. 

Thomas,  on  the  contrary,  who  waxed  fat  and  indolent 
in  college  cloisters,  until  Johnson  compared  him  to 
a  turkey  cock,  was  careless  in  his  personal  habits  and 
averse  to  polite  society.  He  was  the  life  of  the  com- 
mon room  at  Oxford,  romped  with  the  schoolboys 
when  he  visited  Dr.  Warton  at  Winchester,  and  was 
said  to  have  a  hankering  after  pipes  and  ale  and  the 
broad  mirth  of  the  taproom.  Both  Wartons  had  an 
odd  passion  for  military  parades;  and  Thomas — who 
was  a  believer  in  ghosts — used  secretly  to  attend 
hangings.  They  were  also  remarkably  harmonious  in 
their  tastes  and  intellectual  pursuits,  eager  students 
of  old  English  poetry,  Gothic  architecture,  and  British 
antiquities.  So  far  as  enthusiasm,  fine  critical  taste, 
and  elegant  scholarship  can  make  men  poets,  the 
Wartons  were  poets.  But  their  work  was  quite  un- 
original. Many  of  their  poems  can  be  taken  to  pieces 
and  assigned,  almost  line  by  line  and  phrase  by  phrase, 
to  Milton,  Thomson,  Spenser,  Shakspere,  Gray. 
They  had  all  of  our  romantic  poet  Longfellow's 
dangerous  gifts  of  sympathy  and  receptivity,  without 
a  tenth  part  of  his  technical  skill,  or  any  of  his  real 
originality  as  an  artist.  Like  Longfellow,  they  loved 
the  rich  and  mellow  atmosphere  of  the  historic  past: 

"  Tales  that  have  the  rime  of  age, 
And  chronicles  of  eld. " 

The  closing  lines  of  Thomas  Warton's  sonnet, 
*'  Written  in  a  Blank  Leaf  of  Dugdale's  Monasticon  "  ♦ 


*&^ 


*Wm.  Dugdale  published  his  "Monasticon  Anglicanum,"  a 
history  of  English  religious  houses,  in  three  parts,  in  1655-62-73. 
It  was  accompanied  with  illustrations  of  the  costumes  worn  by  the 
ancient  religious  orders,  and  with  architectural  views.     The  latter, 


The  School  of  War  ton.  199 

— a  favorite  with  Charles  Lamb — might  have  been 
written  by  Longfellow: 

"  Nor  rough  nor  barren  are  the  winding  ways 

Of  hoar  Antiquity,  but  strewn  with  flowers."  ^^ 

Joseph  Warton's  pretensions,  as  a  poet,  are  much  less 
than  his  younger  brother's.  Much  of  Thomas  War- 
ton's  poetry,  such  as  \i\s  facetice  in  the  "Oxford  Sau- 
sage" and  his  "Triumph  of  Isis,"  had  an  academic 
flavor.  These  we  may  pass  over,  as  foreign  to  our 
present  inquiries.  So,  too,  with  most  of  his  annual 
laureate  odes,  "On  his  Majesty's  Birthday,"  etc. 
Yet  even  these  official  and  rather  perfunctory  per- 
formances testify  to  his  fondness  for  what  Scott  calls 
*'  the  memorials  of  our  forefathers'  piety  or  splendor." 
Thus,  in  the  birthday  odes  for  1787-88,  and  the  New 
Year  ode  for  1787,  he  pays  a  tribute  to  the  ancient 
minstrels  and  to  early  laureates  like  Chaucer  and 
Spenser,  and  celebrates  "the  Druid  harp"  sounding 
"through  the  gloom  profound  of  forests  hoar";  the 
fanes  and  castles  built  by  the  Normans;  and  the 

" — bright  hall  where  Odin's  Gothic  throne 
With  the  broad  blaze  of  brandished  falchions  shone." 

But  the  most  purely  romantic  of  Thomas  Warton's 
poems  are  "  The  Crusade  "  and  "  The  Grave  of  King 
Arthur."     The  former  is  the  song  which 

"  The  lion  heart  Plantagenet 
Sang,  looking  through  his  prison-bars," 

says  Eastlake,  were  rude  and  unsatisfactory,  but  interesting  to 
modern  students,  as  "preserving  representations  of  buildings,  or 
portions  of  buildings,  no  longer  in  existence  ;  as,  for  instance,  the 
campanile,  or  detached  belfry  of  Salisbury,  since  removed,  and  the 
spire  of  Lincoln,  destroyed  in  1547." 


I 


200  ^  History  of  English  Tiomanticism. 

when  the  minstrel  Blondel  came  wandering  in  search 
of  his  captive  king.  The  latter  describes  how 
Henry  II.,  on  his  way  to  Ireland,  was  feasted  at 
Cilgarran  Castle,  where  the  Welsh  bards  sang  to  him 
of  the  death  of  Arthur  and  his  burial  in  Glastonbury 
Abbey.     The  following  passage  anticipates  Scott: 

' '  Illumining  the  vaulted  roof, 
A  thousand  torches  flamed  aloof; 
From  massy  cups,  with  golden  gleam, 
Sparkled  the  red  metheglin's  stream: 
To  grace  the  gorgeous  festival, 
Along  the  lofty-windowed  hall 
The  storied  tapestry  was  hung; 
With  minstrelsy  the  rafters  rung 
Of  harps  that  with  reflected  light 
From  the  proud  gallery  glittered  bright : 
While  gifted  bards,  a  rival  throng, 
From  distant  Mona,  nurse  of  song, 
From  Teivi  fringed  with  umbrage  brown, 
From  Elvy's  vale  and  Cader's  crown, 
From  many  a  shaggy  precipice 
That  shades  lerne's  hoarse  abyss, 
And  many  a  sunless  solitude 
Of  Radnor's  inmost  mountains  rude, 
To  crown  the  banquet's  solemn  close 
Themes  of  British  glory  chose." 

Here  is  much  of  Scott's  skill  in  the  poetic  manipulation 
of  place-names,  <?.  ^., 

"  Day  set  on  Norham's  castled  steep. 
And  Tweed's  fair  river,  broad  and  deep, 
And  Cheviot's  mountains  lone  " — 

names  which  leave  a  far-resounding  romantic  rumble 
behind  them.  Another  passage  in  Warton's  poem 
brings    us  a  long  way  on   toward   Tennyson's   "wild 


7 he  School  of  War  ton.  201 

Tintagel  by  the  Cornish  sea  "  and  his  "island  valley  of 
Avilion." 

"  O'er  Cornwall's  cliffs  the  tempest  roared  : 
High  the  screaming  sea-mew  soared: 
In  Tintaggel's  topmost  tower 
Darksome  fell  the  sleety  shower  : 
Round  the  rough  castle  shrilly  sung 
The  whirling  blast,  and  wildly  flung 
On  each  tall  rampart's  thundering  side 
The  surges  of  the  tumbling  tide, 
When  Arthur  ranged  his  red-cross  ranks 
On  conscious  Camlan's  crimsoned  banks  : 
By  Mordred's  faithless  guile  decreed 
Beneath  a  Saxon  spear  to  bleed. 
Yet  in  vain  a  Paynim  foe 
Armed  with  fate  the  mighty  blow; 
For  when  he  fell,  an  elfin  queen, 
All  in  secret  and  unseen, 
O'er  the  fainting  hero  threw 
Her  mantle  of  ambrosial  blue, 
And  bade  her  spirits  bear  him  far, 
In  Merlin's  agate-axled  car, 
To  her  green  isle's  enamelled  steep 
Far  in  the  navel  of  the  deep." 

Other  poems  of  Thomas  Warton  touching  upon  his 
favorite  studies  are  the  "  Ode  Sent  to  Mr.  Upton,  on 
his  Edition  of  the  Faery  Queene,"  the  "Monody 
Written  near  Stratford-upon-Avon,"  the  sonnets, 
"Written  at  Stonehenge,"  "To  Mr.  Gray,"  and  "On 
King  Arthur's  Round  Table,"  and  the  humorous  epistle 
which  he  attributes  to  Thomas  Hearne,  the  antiquary, 
denouncing  the  bishops  for  their  recent  order  that  fast- 
prayers  should  be  printed  in  modern  type  instead  of 
black  letter,  and  pronouncing  a  curse  upon  the  author 


202  <vf  History  of  English  l^omanticism. 

of  "The  Companion  to  the  Oxford  Guide  Book"  for 
his  disrespectful  remarks  about  antiquaries. 

"  May'st  thou  pore  in  vain 
For  dubious  doorways  !  May  revengeful  moths 
Thy  ledgers  eat !  May  chronologic  spouts 
Retain  no  cypher  legible  !  May  crypts 
Lurk  undiscovered  !  Nor  may'st  thou  spell  the  names 
Of  saints  in  storied  windows,  nor  the  dates 
Of  bells  discover,  nor  the  genuine  site 
Of  abbots'  pantries  !  " 

Warton  was  a  classical  scholar  and,  like  most  of  the 
forerunners  of  the  romantic  school,  was  a  trifle  shame- 
faced over  his  Gothic  heresies.  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds 
had  supplied  a  painted  window  of  classical  design  for 
New  College,  Oxford;  and  Warton,  in  some  com- 
plimentary verses,  professes  that  those  "portraitures 
of  Attic  art"  have  won  him  back  to  the  true  taste;* 
and  prophesies  that  henceforth  angels,  apostles, 
saints,  miracles,  martyrdoms,  and  tales  of  legendary 
lore  shall — 

"  No  more  the  sacred  window's  round  disgrace, 
But  yield  to  Grecian  groups  the  shining  space.    .    . 
Thy  powerful  hand  has  broke  the  Gothic  chain, 
And  brought  my  bosom  back  to  truth  again.    .    . 
For  long,  enamoured  of  a  barbarous  age, 
A  faithless  truant  to  the  classic  page — 

*  "Verses  on  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds'  Painted  Window."     C/.  Poe. 
"  To  Helen  "  : 

"  On  desperate  seas  long  wont  to  roam 
Thy  hyacinth  hair,  thy  classic  face. 
Thy  Naiad  airs  have  brought  me  home 
To  the  glory  that  was  Greece, 
And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome." 


The  School  of  Warton.  203 

Long  have  I  loved  to  catch  the  simple  chime 

Of  minstrel  harps,  and  spell  the  fabling  rime ; 

To  view  the  festive  rites,  the  knightly  play, 

That  decked  heroic  Albion's  elder  day  ; 

To  mark  the  mouldering  halls  of  barons  bold. 

And  the  rough  castle,  cast  in  giant  mould  ; 

With  Gothic  manners,  Gothic  arts  explore, 

And  muse  on  the  magnificence  of  yore. 

But  chief,  enraptured  have  I  loved  to  roam, 

A  lingering  votary,  the  vaulted  dome, 

Where  the  tall  shafts,  that  mount  in  massy  pride, 

Their  mingling  branches  shoot  from  side  to  side  ; 

Where  elfin  sculptors,  with  fantastic  clew. 

O'er  the  long  roof  their  wild  embroidery  drew  ; 

Where  Superstition,  with  capricious  hand. 

In  many  a  maze,  the  wreathed  window  planned. 

With  hues  romantic  tinged  the  gorgeous  pane, 

To  fill  with  holy  light  the  wondrous  fane."  * 

The  application  of  the  word  "romantic,"  in  this 
passage,  to  the  mediaeval  art  of  glass-staining  is 
significant.  The  revival  of  the  art  in  our  own  day  is 
due  to  the  influence  of  the  latest  English  school  of 
romantic  poetry  and  painting,  and  especially  to  Wil- 
liam Morris.  Warton's  biographers  track  his  passion 
for  antiquity  to  the  impression  left  upon  his  mind  by  a 
visit  to  Windsor  Castle,  when  he  was  a  boy.  He  used 
to  spend  his  summers  in  wandering  through  abbeys  and 
cathedrals.  He  kept  notes  of  his  observations  and  is 
known  to  have  begun  a  work  on  Gothic  architecture, 

*  This  apology  should  be  compared  with  Scott's  verse  epistle  to 
Wm.  Erskine,  prefixed  to  the  third  canto  of  "  Marmion." 

"  For  me,  thus  nurtured,  dost  thou  ask 
The  classic  poet's  well-conned  task  ?  "  etc. 

Scott  spoke  of  himself  in  Warton's  exact  language,  as  a  "  truant  to 
the  classic  page." 


t  ( 


204  a/^  History  of  English  %omaniicism. 

no  trace  of  which,  however,  was  found  among  his 
manuscripts.  The  Bodleian  Library  was  one  of  his 
haunts,  and  he  was  frequently  seen  ''surveying  with 
quiet  and  rapt  earnestness  the  ancient  gateway  of 
Magdalen  College."  He  delighted  in  illuminated 
manuscripts  and  black-letter  folios.  In  his  *'  Observa- 
tions on  the  Faery  Queene  "  *  he  introduces  a  digres- 
sion of  twenty  pages  on  Gothic  architecture,  and 
speaks  lovingly  of  a  "very  curious  and  beautiful  folio 
manuscript  of  the  history  of  Arthur  and  his  knights 
in  the  Ashmolean  Museum  at  Oxford,  written  on 
vellum,  with  illuminated  initials  and  head-pieces,  in 
which  we  see  the  fashion  of  ancient  armor,  building, 
manner  of  tilting  and  other  particulars." 

Another  very  characteristic  poem  of  Warton's  is  the 
"Ode  Written  at  Vale-Royal  Abbey  in  Cheshire,"  a 
monastery  of  Cistercian  monks,  founded  by  Edward  I. 
This  piece  is  saturated  with  romantic  feeling  and 
written  in  the  stanza  and  manner  of  Gray's  "  Elegy," 
as  will  appear  from  a  pair  of  stanzas,  taken  at  random : 

"  By  the  slow  clock,  in  stately-measured  chime, 
That  from  the  massy  tower  tremendous  tolled, 
No  more  the  plowman  counts  the  tedious  time, 
Nor  distant  shepherd  pens  the  twilight  fold. 

"  High  o'er  the  trackless  heath  at  midnight  seen, 
No  more  the  windows,  ranged  in  long  array 
(Where  the  tall  shaft  and  fretted  nook  between 
Thick  ivy  twines),  the  tapered  rites  betray." 

It  is  a  note  of  Warton's  period  that,  though  Fancy  and 
the  Muse  survey  the  ruins  of  the  abbey  with  pensive 
regret,  "  severer  Reason  " — the  real  eighteenth-century 
divinity — "  scans  the  scene  with  philosophic  ken,"  and 

*  See  ante,  pp.  99-101. 


The  School  of  War  ton.  205 

— being  a  Protestant — reflects  that,  after  all,  the  monas- 
tic houses  were  "  Superstition's  shrine  "  and  their  dem- 
olition was  a  good  thing  for  Science  and  Religion. 

The  greatest  service,  however,  that  Thomas  Warton 
rendered  to  the  studies  that  he  loved  was  his  "  His- 
tory of  English  Poetry  from  the  Twelfth  to  the  Close 
of  the  Sixteenth  Century."  This  was  in  three  volumes, 
published  respectively  in  1774,  1777,  and  1781.  The 
fragment  of  a  fourth  volume  was  issued  in  1790.  A 
revised  edition  in  four  volumes  was  published  in  1824, 
under  the  editorship  of  Richard  Price,  corrected, 
augmented,  and  annotated  by  Ritson,  Douce,  Park, 
Ashby,  and  the  editor  himself.  In  187 1  appeared  a  new 
revision  (also  in  four  volumes)  edited  by  W.  Carew 
Hazlitt,  with  many  additions,  by  the  editor  and  by 
well-known  English  scholars  like  Madden,  Skeat, 
Furnivall,  Morris,  and  Thomas  and  Aldis  Wright.  It 
should  never  be  forgotten,  in  estimating  the  value  of 
Warton's  work,  that  he  was  a  forerunner  in  this  field. 
Much  of  his  learning  is  out  of  date,  and  the  modern 
editors  of  his  history — Price  and  Hazlitt — seem  to 
the  discouraged  reader  to  be  chiefly  engaged,  in  their 
footnotes  and  bracketed  interpellations,  in  taking  back 
statements  that  Warton  had  made  in  the  text.  The 
leading  position,  e.  g.,  of  his  preliminary  dissertation, 
"Of  the  Origin  of  Romantic  Fiction  in  Europe" — 
deriving  it  from  the  Spanish  Arabs — has  long  since 
been  discredited.  But  Warton's  learning  was  wide,  if 
not  exact;  and  it  was  not  dry  learning,  but  quickened 
by  the  spirit  of  a  genuine  man  of  letters.  Therefore, 
in  spite  of  its  obsoleteness  in  matters  of  fact,  his  his- 
tory remains  readable,  as  a  body  of  descriptive  criti- 
cism, or  a  continuous  literary  essay.     The  best  way  to 


2o6  <iA  History  of  English  T^manticism. 

read  it  is  to  read  it  as  it  was  written — in  the  origi- 
nal edition — disregarding  the  apparatus  of  notes, 
which  modern  scholars  have  accumulated  about  it,  but 
remembering  that  it  is  no  longer  an  authority  and 
probably  needs  correcting  on  every  page.  Read  thus, 
it  is  a  thoroughly  delightful  book,  "a  classic  in  its 
way,"  as  Lowell  has  said.  Southey,  too,  affirmed  that 
its  publication  formed  an  epoch  in  literary  history; 
and  that,  with  Percy's  "  Reliques,"  it  had  promoted, 
beyond  any  other  work,  the  "  growth  of  a  better  taste 
than  had  prevailed  for  the  hundred  years  preceding." 

Gray  had  schemed  a  history  of  English  poetry,  but 
relinquished  the  design  to  Warton,  to  whom  he  com- 
municated an  outline  of  his  own  plan.  The  "Obser- 
vations on  English  Metre  "  and  the  essay  on  the  poet 
Lydgate,  among  Gray's  prose  remains,  are  apparently 
portions  of  this  projected  work. 

Lowell,  furthermore,  pronounces  Joseph  Warton's 
"Essay  on  the  Genius  and  Writings  of  Pope"  (1756) 
"the  earliest  public  official  declaration  of  war  against 
the  reigning  mode."  The  new  school  had  its  critics, 
as  well  as  its  poets,  and  the  Wartons  were  more  effective 
in  the  former  capacity.  The  war  thus  opened  was  by 
no  means  as  internecine  as  that  waged  by  the  French 
classicists  and  romanticists  of  1830.  It  has  never  been 
possible  to  get  up  a  very  serious  conflict  in  England, 
upon  merely  aesthetic  grounds.  Yet  the  same  oppo- 
sition existed.  Warton's  biographer  tells  us  that  the 
strictures  made  upon  his  essay  were  "powerful 
enough  to  damp  the  ardor  of  the  essayist,  who  left 
his  work  in  an  imperfect  state  for  the  long  space  of 
twenty-six  years,"  /.  <?.,  till  1782,  when  he  published  the 
second  volume. 


The  School  of  Warton.  207 

Both  Wartons  Avere  personal  friends  of  Dr.  John- 
son; they  were  members  of  the  Literary  Club  and 
contributors  to  the  Idler  dind  the  Adventurer.  Thomas 
interested  himself  to  get  Johnson  the  Master's  degree 
from  Oxford,  where  the  doctor  made  him  a  visit. 
Some  correspondence  between  them  is  given  in 
Boswell.  Johnson  maintained  in  public  a  respectful  >> 
attitude  toward  the  critical  and  historical  work  of  the 
Wartons;  but  he  had  no  sympathy  with  their  anti- 
quarian enthusiasm  or  their  liking  for  old  English 
poetry.  In  private  he  ridiculed  Thomas'  verses,  and 
summed  them  up  in  the  manner  ensuing: 

"  Wheresoe'er  I  turn  my  view, 
All  is  strange  yet  nothing  new; 
Endless  labor  all  along, 
Endless  labor  to  be  wrong; 
Phrase  that  time  has  flung  away, 
Uncouth  words  in  disarray, 
Tricked  in  antique  ruff  and  bonnet, 
Ode  and  elegy  and  sonnet." 

And  although  he  added,  "Remember  that  I  love  the 
fellow  dearly,  for  all  I  laugh  at  him,"  this  saving 
clause  failed  to  soothe  the  poet's  indignant  breast, 
when  he  heard  that  the  doctor  had  ridiculed  his  lines. 
An  estrangement  resulted  which  Johnson  is  said  to  , 
have  spoken  of  even  with  tears,  saying  "that  Tom  .^^^ 
Warton  was  the  only  man  of  genius  he  ever  knew  who 
wanted  a  heart." 

Goldsmith,  too,  belonged  to  the  conservative  party, 
though  Mr.  Perry  *  detects  romantic  touches  in  "The 
Deserted  Village,"  such  as  the  line, 

*"  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,"  p.  397. 


268  c/f  History  of  English  l^pmanticism. 

"  Where  wild  Altama  murmurs  to  their  woe," 


or 


On  Torno's  cliffs  or  Pambamarca's  side." 


In  his  "Enquiry  into  the  Present  State  of  Polite 
Learning"  (1759)  Goldsmith  pronounces  the  age  one 
of  literary  decay;  he  deplores  the  vogue  of  blank 
verse — which  he  calls  an  "erroneous  innovation" — 
and  the  "  disgusting  solemnity  of  manner  "  that  it  has 
brought  into  fashion.  He  complains  of  the  revival  of 
old  plays  upon  the  stage.  "Old  pieces  are  revived, 
and  scarcely  any  new  ones  admitted.  .  .  The  public 
are  again  obliged  to  ruminate  over  those  ashes  of 
absurdity  which  were  disgusting  to  our  ancestors  even 
in  an  age  of  ignorance.  .  .  What  must  be  done? 
Only  sit  down  contented,  cry  up  all  that  comes  before 
us  and  advance  even  the  absurdities  of  Shakspere. 
Let  the  reader  suspend  his  censure;  I  admire  the 
beauties  of  this  great  father  of  our  stage  as  much  as 
they  deserve,  but  could  wish,  for  the  honor  of  our 
country,  and  for  his  own  too,  that  many  of  his  scenes 
were  forgotten.  A  man  blind  of  one  eye  should 
always  be  painted  in  profile.  Let  the  spectator  who 
assists  at  any  of  these  new  revived  pieces  only  ask 
himself  whether  he  would  approve  such  a  performance, 
if  written  by  a  modern  poet.  I  fear  he  will  find  that 
much  of  his  applause  proceeds  merely  from  the  sound 
of  a  name  and  an  empty  veneration  for  antiquity.  In 
fact  the  revival  of  those  pieces  of  forced  humor,  far- 
fetched conceit  and  unnatitral  hyperbole  7vhich  have  been 
ascribed  to  Shakspere,  is  rather  gibbeting  than  raising  a 
Statue  to  his  memory." 

The  words  that  I  have  italicized  make  it  evident  that 


7he  School  of  IVarton.  209 

what  Goldsmith  was  really  finding  fault  with  was  the 
restoration  of  the  original  text  of  Shakspere's  plays, 
in  place  of  the  garbled  versions  that  had  hitherto  been 
acted.  This  restoration  was  largely  due  to  Garrick, 
but  Goldsmith's  language  implies  that  the  reform  was 
demanded  by  public  opinion  and  by  the  increasing 
"veneration  for  antiquity."  The  next  passage  shows 
that  the  new  school  had  its  claque,  which  rallied  to 
the  support  of  the  old  British  drama  as  the  French 
romanticists  did,  nearly  a  century  later,  to  the  support 
of  Victor  Hugo's  melodr antes. '^ 

"  What  strange  vamped  comedies,  farcical  tragedies, 
or  what  shall  I  call  them — speaking  pantomimes  have 
we  not  of  late  seen?  .  .  .  The  piece  pleases  our 
critics  because  it  talks  Old  English;  and  it  pleases  the 
galleries  because  it  has  ribaldry.  .  .  A  prologue 
generally  precedes  the  piece,  to  inform  us  that  it  was 
composed  by  Shakspere  or  old  Ben,  or  somebody  else 
who  took  them  for  his  model.  A  face  of  iron  could 
not  have  the  assurance  to  avow  dislike;  the  theater 
has  its  partisans  who  understand  the  force  of  combi- 
nations trained  up  to  vociferation,  clapping  of  hands 
and  clattering  of  sticks;  and  though  a  man  might 
have  strength  sufficient  to  overcome  a  lion  in  single 
combat,  he  may  run  the  risk  of  being  devoured  by  an 
army  of  ants." 

Goldsmith  returned  to  the  charge  in  "  The  Vicar  of 
Wakefield"  (1766),  where  Dr.  Primrose,  inquiring 
of  the  two  London  dames,  "who  were  the  present 
theatrical  writers  in  vogue;  who  were  the  Drydens  and 

*  Lowell  mentions  the  publication  of  Dodsley's  "Old  Plays," 
(1744)  as,  like  Percy's  "  Reliques,"  a  symptom  of  the  return  to  the 
past.     Essay  on  "  Gray." 


2IO  nA  History  of  English  'T(pmanttcism. 

Otways  of  the  day,"  is  surprised  to  learn  that  Dryden 
and  Rowe  are  quite  out  of  fashion,  that  taste  has  gone 
back  a  whole  century,  and  that  "  Fletcher,  Ben  Jonson 
and  all  the  plays  of  Shakspere  are  the  only  things  that 
go  down."  "How,"  cries  the  good  vicar,  "is  it 
possible  the  present  age  can  be  pleased  with  that 
antiquated  dialect,  that  obsolete  humor,  those  over- 
charged characters  which  abound  in  the  works  you 
mention?  "  Goldsmith's  disgust  with  this  affectation 
finds  further  vent  in  his  "  Life  of  Parnell  "  (1770). 
"  He  [Parnell]  appears  to  me  to  be  the  last  of  that 
great  school  that  had  modeled  itself  upon  the  ancients, 
and  taught  English  poetry  to  resemble  what  the 
generality  of  mankind  have  allowed  to  excel.  .  .  His 
productions  bear  no  resemblance  to  those  tawdry 
things  which  it  has,  for  some  time,  been  the  fashion  to 
admire.  .  .  His  poetical  language  is  not  less  correct 
than  his  subjects  are  pleasing.  He  found  it  at  that 
period  in  which  it  was  brought  to  its  highest  pitch  of 
refinement;  and  ever  since  his  time,  it  has  been 
gradually  debasing.  It  is,  indeed,  amazing,  after 
what  has  been  done  by  Dryden,  Addison,  and  Pope,  to 
improve  and  harmonize  our  native  tongue,  that  their 
successors  should  have  taken  so  much  pains  to  involve 
it  into  pristine  barbarity.  These  misguided  innovators 
have  not  been  content  with  restoring  antiquated  words 
and  phrases,  but  have  indulged  themselves  in  the  most 
licentious  transpositions  and  the  harshest  construc- 
tions; vainly  imagining  that,  the  more  their  writings 
are  unlike  prose,  the  more  they  resemble  poetry. 
They  have  adopted  a  language  of  their  own,  and  call 
upon  mankind  for  admiration.  All  those  who  do  not 
understand  them  are  silent:  and  those  who  make  out 


The  School  of  Warton. 


211 


their  meaning  are  willing  to  praise,  to  show  they 
understand."  This  last  sentence  is  a  hit  at  the  alleged 
obscurity  of  Gray's  and  Mason's  odes. 

To  illustrate  the  growth  of  a  retrospective  habit  in 
literature  Mr.  Perry  *  quotes  at  length  from  an 
essay  "  On  the  Prevailing  Taste  for  the  Old  English 
Poets,"  by  Vicesimus  Knox,  sometime  master  of  Tun- 
bridge  school,  editor  of  "  Elegant  Extracts  "  and 
honorary  doctor  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania. 
Knox's  essays  were  written  while  he  was  an  Oxford 
undergraduate,  and  published  collectively  in  1777. 
By  this  time  the  romantic  movement  was  in  full  swing. 
"  The  Castle  of  Otranto  "  and  Percy's  ''Reliques  "  had 
been  out  more  than  ten  years:  many  of  the  Rowley 
poems  were  in  print;  and  in  this  very  year,  Tyrwhitt 
issued  a  complete  edition  of  them,  and  Warton  pub- 
lished the  second  volume  of  his  ''History  of  English 
Poetry."  Chatterton  and  Percy  are  both  mentioned 
by  Knox. 

"The  antiquarian  spirit,"  he  writes,  "which  was 
once  confined  to  inquiries  concerning  the  manners, 
the  buildings,  the  records,  and  the  coins  of  the  ages 
that  preceded  us,  has  now  extended  itself  to  those 
poetical  compositions  which  were  popular  among  our 
forefathers,  but  which  have  gradually  sunk  into  oblivion 
through  the  decay  of  language  and  the  prevalence  of  a 
correct  and  polished  taste.  Books  printed  in  the 
black  letter  are  sought  for  with  the  same  avidity  with 
which  the  English  antiquary  peruses  a  monumental 
inscription,  or  treasures  up  a  Saxon  piece  of  money. 
The  popular  ballad,  composed  by  some  illiterate 
minstrel,  and  which  has  been  handed  down  by  tradition 
*  "  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,"  pp.  401-03.    . 


212  i/J  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

for  several  centuries,  is  rescued  from  the  hands  of  the 
vulgar,  to  obtain  a  place  in   the  collection  of  the  man 
of  taste.     Verses  which,  a  few  years  past,  were  thought 
worthy  the  attention  of  children  only,  or  of  tl^e  lowest 
and  rudest  orders,  are   now  admired  for   that  artless 
simplicity  which  once  obtained  the  name  of  coarseness 
and  vulgarity."     Early  English  poetry,  continues  the 
essayist,  ''  has  had  its  day,  and  the  antiquary  must  not 
despise  us  if  we  cannot  peruse  it  with  patience.     He 
who  delights  in  all  such  reading  as  is  never  read,  may 
derive  some  pleasure  from  the  singularity  of  his  taste, 
but  he  ought  still  to  respect  the  judgment  of  mankind, 
which  has  consigned  to  oblivion  the  works  which  he 
admires.      While   he   pores  unmolested    on  Chaucer, 
Gower,  Lydgate,  and  Occleve,  let  him  not  censure  our 
obstinacy  in  adhering  to  Homer,  Virgil,  Milton,  and 
Pope.   .   .     Notwithstanding  the  incontrovertible  merit 
of  many  of  our  ancient  relics  of  poetry,  I  believe  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  any  one  of  them  would  be 
tolerated  as  the  production  of  a  modern  poet.     As  a 
good  imitation  of  the  ancient  manner,  it  would  find  its 
admirers;  but,  considered  independently,  as  an  origi- 
nal, it  would  be  thought  a  careless,  vulgar,  inartificial 
composition.     There  are   few    who    do    not  read  Dr. 
Percy's  own  pieces,  and   those  of  other  late  writers, 
with  more  pleasure  than  the  oldest  ballad  in  the  col- 
lection of  that  ingenious  writer."     Mr.  Perry  quotes 
another  paper  of  Knox  in  which  he  divides  the  admirers 
of  English  poetry  into  two  parties:   ''  On  one  side  are 
the  lovers  and  imitators  of  Spenser  and  Milton;  and 
on  the  other,  those  of  Dryden,  Boileau,  and  Pope":  in 
modern  phrase,  the  romanticists  and  the  classicists. 
Joseph  Warton's  "  Essay  on  Pope"  was  an  attempt 


The  School  of  Warton.  213 

to  fix  its  subject's  rank  among  English  poets.  Fol- 
lowing the  discursive  method  of  Thomas  Warton's 
"  Observations  on  the  Faerie  Queene,"  it  was  likewise 
an  elaborate  commentary  on  all  of  Pope's  poems 
seriatim.  Every  point  was  illustrated  with  abundant 
learning,  and  there  were  digressions  amounting  to  in- 
dependent essays  on  collateral  topics:  one,  <?.  g.,  on 
Chaucer,  one  on  early  French  metrical  romances; 
another  on  Gothic  architecture:  another  on  the  new 
school  of  landscape  gardening,  in  which  Walpole's 
essay  and  Mason's  poem  are  quoted  with  approval,  and 
mention  is  made  of  the  Leasowes.  The  book  was 
dedicated  to  Young;  and  when  the  second  volume  was 
published  in  1782,  the  first  was  reissued  in  a  revised 
form  and  introduced  by  a  letter  to  the  author  from 
Tyrwhitt,  who  writes  that,  under  the  shelter  of 
Warton's  authority,  "one  may  perhaps  venture  toavow 
an  opinion  that  poetry  is  not  confined  to  rhyming 
couplets,  and  that  its  greatest  powers  are  not  displayed 
in  prologues  and  epilogues." 

The  modern  reader  will  be  apt  to  think  Warton's 
estimate  of  Pope  quite  high  enough.  He  places  him, 
to  be  sure,  in  the  second  rank  of  poets,  below  Spenser, 
Shakspere,  and  Milton,  yet  next  to  Milton  and  above 
Dryden;  and  he  calls  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne  the 
great  age  of  English  poetry.  Yet  if  it  be  recollected 
that  the  essay  was  published  only  twelve  years  after 
Pope's  death,  and  at  a  time  when  he  was  still  commonly 
held  to  be,  if  not  the  greatest  poet,  at  least  the  greatest 
artist  in  verse,  that  England  had  ever  produced,  it  will 
be  seen  that  Warton's  opinions  might  well  be  thought 
revolutionary,  and  his  challenge  to  the  critics  a  bold 
one.     These  opinions  can  be  best  exhibited  by  quoting 


214  <^  History  of  English  "T^manticism.   ' 

a  few  passages  from    his   book,  not   consecutive,  but 
taken  here  and  there  as  best  suits  the  purpose. 

"The  subHme  and  the  pathetic  are  the  two  chief 
nerves  of  all  genuine  poesy.  What  is  there  transcend- 
ently  sublime  or  pathetic  in  Pope  ?  .  .  .  He  early 
left  the  more  poetical  provinces  of  his  art,  to  become 
a  moral,  didactic,  and  satiric  poet.  .  .  And  because  I 
am,  perhaps,  unwilling  to  speak  out  in  plain  English, 
I  will  adopt  the  following  passage  of  Voltaire,  which, 
in  my  opinion,  as  exactly  characterizes  Pope  as  it  does 
his  model,  Boileau,  for  whom  it  was  originally  designed. 
'Incapable  peut-etre  du  sublime  qui  ^leve  I'ame,  et  du 
sentiment  qui  I'attendrit,  mais  fait  pour  eclairer  ceux 
a  qui  la  nature  accorda  I'un  et  I'autre;  laborieux, 
severe,  precis,  pur,  harmonieux,  il  devint  enfin  le  poete 
de  la  Raison.'  ...  A  clear  head  and  acute  under- 
standing are  not  sufficient  alone  to  make  a  poet;  the 
most  solid  observations  on  human  life,  expressed  with 
the  utmost  elegance  and  brevity,  are  morality  and  not 
poetry.  .  .  It  is  a  creative  and  glowing  imagination, 
acer  spiritus  ac  vis,  and  that  alone,  that  can  stamp 
a  writer  with  this  exalted  and  very  uncommon 
character." 

Warton  believes  that  Pope's  projected  epic  on  Bru- 
tus, the  legendary  founder  of  Britain,  ''would  have 
more  resembled  the  '  Henriade  '  than  the  'Iliad,'  or 
even  the  '  Gierusalemme  Liberata';  that  it  would 
have  appeared  (if  this  scheme  had  been  executed)  how 
much,  and  for  what  reasons,  the  man  that  is  skillful  in 
painting  modern  life,  and  the  most  secret  foibles  and 
follies  of  his  contemporaries,  is,  THEREFORE,  dis- 
qualified for  representing  the  ages  of  heroism,  and  that 
simple  life  v/hich  alone  epic  poetry  can  gracefully  de- 


7he  School  of  War  ton.  215 

scribe.  .  .  Wit  and  satire  are  transitory  and  perish- 
able, but  nature  and  passion  are  eternal."  The  largest 
portion  of  Pope's  work,  says  the  author's  closing  sum- 
mary, *'is  of  the  didactic,  moral,  and  satiric  kind;  and 
consequently  not  of  the  most  poetic  species  of  poetry; 
whence  it  is  manifest  that  good  sense  and  judgment 
were  his  characteristical  excellencies,  rather  than  fancy 
and  invention.  .  .  He  stuck  to  describing  modern 
manners;  but  those  manners,  because  they  are  familiar, 
uniform,  artificial,  and  polished,  are  in  their  very  na- 
ture, unfit  for  any  lofty  effort  of  the  Muse.  He  gradu- 
ally became  one  of  the  most  correct,  even,  and  exact 
poets  that  ever  wrote.  .  .  Whatever  poetical  enthu- 
siasm he  actually  possessed,  he  withheld  and  stifled. 
The  perusal  of  him  affects  not  our  minds  with  such 
strong  emotions  as  we  feel  from  Homer  and  Milton; 
so  that  no  man  of  a  true  poetical  spirit  is  master  of 
himself  while  he  reads  them.  .  .  He  who  would  think 
the  'Faerie  Queene,'  '  Palamon  and  Arcite,'  the 
'Tempest'  or  '  Comus,' childish  and  romantic  might 
relish  Pope.  Surely  it  is  no  narrow  and  niggardly 
encomium  to  say,  he  is  the  great  poet  of  Reason,  the 
first  of  ethical  authors  in  verse." 

To  illustrate  Pope's  inferiority  in  the  poetry  of  na- 
ture and  passion,  Warton  quotes  freely  by  way  of  con- 
trast, not  only  from  Spenser  and  Milton,  but  from 
such  contemporaries  of  his  own  as  Thomson,  Akenside, 
Gray,  Collins,  Dyer,  Mason,  West,  Shenstone,  and 
Bedingfield.  He  complains  that  Pope's  "Pastorals" 
contains  no  new  image  of  nature,  and  his  "Windsor 
Forest"  no  local  color;  while  "  the  scenes  of  Thomson 
are  frequently  as  wild  and  romantic  as  those  of  Sal- 
vator  Rosa,  varied   with   precipices  and  torrents  and 


2x6  aA  History  of  English  'T{pmanticism. 

'  castled  cliffs  '  and  deep  valleys,  with  piny  mountains 
and  the  gloomiest  caverns."  "When  Gray  published 
his  exquisite  ode  on  Eton  College  .  .  .  little  notice 
was  taken  of  it;  but  I  suppose  no  critic  can  be  found 
that  will  not  place  it  far  above  Pope's  '  Pastorals.'  " 

A  few  additional  passages  will  serve  to  show  that 
this  critic's  literary  principles,  in  general,  were  con- 
sciously and  polemically  romantic.  Thus  he  pleads  for 
the  mot  precis — that  shibboleth  of  the  nineteenth-cen- 
tury romanticists — for  '■'■natural,  little  circumstances" 
against  "those  who  are  fond  of  generalities'' ;  for  the 
"lively  painting  of  Spenser  and  Shakspere,"  as  con- 
trasted with  the  lack  of  picturesqueness  and  imagery 
in  Voltaire's  "Henriade."  He  praises  "the  fashion 
that  has  lately  obtained,  in  all  the  nations  of  Europe, 
of  republishing  and  illustrating  their  old  poets."* 
Again,  commenting  upon  Pope's  well-known  triplet, 

"  Waller  was  smooth,  but  Dryden  taught  to  join 
The  varying  verse,  the  full -resounding  line, 
The  long  majestic  march  and  energy  divine  !  " 

he  exclaims:  "What!  Did  Milton  contribute  nothing 
to  the  harmony  and  extent  of  our  language?  .  .  . 
Surely  his  verses  vary  and  resound  as  much,  and  dis- 
play as  much  majesty  and  energy,  as  any  that  can  be 
found  in  Dryden.  And  we  will  venture  to  say  that  he 
that  studies  Milton  attentively,  will  gain  a  truer  taste 
for  genuine  poetry  than  he  that  forms  himself  on 
French  writers  and   their  followers."     Elsewhere  he 

*  It  is  curious,  however,  to  find  Warton  describing  Villon  as  "  a 
pert  and  insipid  ballad-monger,  whose  thoughts  and  diction  were  as 
low  and  illiberal  as  his  life,"  Vol.  II.  p.  338  (Fifth  Edition,  1806). 


The  School  of  Warton.  2 1 7 

expresses  a  preference  for  blank  verse  over  rhyme,   in 
long  poems  on  subjects  of  a  dignified  kind.* 

**  It  is  perpetually  the  nauseous  cant  of  the  French 
critics,  and  of  their  advocates  and  pupils,  that  the 
English  writers  are  generally  incorrect.  If  correctness 
implies  an  absence  of  petty  faults,  this  perhaps  may 
be  granted:  if  it  means  that,  because  their  tragedians 
have  avoided  the  irregularities  of  Shakspere,  and 
have  observed  a  juster  oeconomy  in  their  fables,  there- 
fore the  'Athalia,'  for  instance,  is  preferable  to 
*  Lear,' the  notion  is  groundless  and  absurd.  Though 
the  *  Henriade  '  should  be  allowed  to  be  free  from 
any  very  gross  absurdities,  yet  who  will  dare  to  rank 
it  with  the  '  Paradise  Lost '?  .  .  .  In  our  own  country 
the  rules  of  the  drama  were  never  more  completely 
understood  than  at  present;  yet  what  uninteresting, 
though  faultless,  tragedies  have  we  lately  seen!  .  .  . 
Whether  or  no  the  natural  powers  be  not  confined  and 
debilitated  by  that  timidity  and  caution  which  is  occa- 
sioned by  a  rigid  regard  to  the  dictates  of  art;  or 
whether  that  philosophical,  that  geometrical  and  sys- 
tematical spirit  so  much  in  vogue,  which  has  spread 
itself  from  the  sciences  even  into  polite  literature,  by 
consulting  only  reason,  has  not  diminished  and  de- 
stroyed sentiment,  and  made  our  poets  write  from  and 
to  the  head  rather  than  the  heart;  or  whether,  lastly, 
when  just  models,  from  which  the  rules  have  neces- 

*  Warton  quotes  the  following  bathetic  opening  of  a  "  Poem  in 
Praise  of  Blank  Verse  "  by  Aaron  Hill,  "  one  of  the  very  first  persons 
who  took  notice  of  Thomson,  on  the  publication  of  '  Winter ' "  : 

"  Up  from  Rhyme's  poppied  vale  !  and  ride  the  storm 
That  thunders  in  blank  verse  !  " 

—  Vol.  J  I.  p.  186. 


2i8  c//  History  of  English  %oi7tanticism, 

sarily  been  drawn,  have  once  appeared,  succeeding 
writers,  by  vainly  and  ambitiously  striving  to  surpass 
those  ...  do  not  become  stiff  and  forced."  One 
of  these  uninteresting,  though  faultless  tragedies  was 
"Cato,"  which  Warton  pronounces  a  "sententious 
and  declamatory  drama  "  filled  with  "  pompous  Roman 
sentiments,"  but  wanting  action  and  pathos.  He 
censures  the  tameness  of  Addison's  "  Letter  from 
Italy."*  "With  what  flatness  and  unfeelingness  has 
he  spoken  of  statuary  and  painting!  Raphael  never 
received  a  more  phlegmatic  eulogy."  He  refers  on 
the  other  hand  to  Gray's  account  of  his  journey  to  the 
Grande  Chartreuse,  f  as  worthy  of  comparison  with  one 
of  the  finest  passages  in  the  "  Epistle  of  Eloisa  to 
Abelard." 

This  mention  of  Addison  recalls  a  very  instructive 
letter  of  Gray  on  the  subject  of  poetic  style. J  The 
romanticists  loved  a  rich  diction,  and  the  passage 
might  be  taken  as  an  anticipatory  defense  of  himself 
against  Wordsworth's  strictures  in  the  preface  to  the 
"Lyrical  Ballads."  "The  language  of  the  age," 
wrote  Gray,  "  is  never  the  language  of  poetry,  except 
among  the  French,  whose  verse  .  .  .  differs  in  noth- 
ing from  prose.  Our  poetry  has  a  language  peculiar 
to  itself;  to  which  almost  everyone  that  has  written 
has  added  something,  by  enriching  it  with  foreign 
idioms  and  derivatives;  nay,  sometimes  words  of  their 
own  composition  or  invention.  Shakspere  and  Milton 
have  been  great  creators  in  this  way  .  .  .  our  lan- 
guage has  an  undoubted  right  to  words  of  an  hundred 
years  old,  provided  antiquity  have  not  rendered  them 

*  See  ante,  p.  57.  f  See  ante,  p.  i8l. 

^:To  Richard  West,  April,  1742. 


The  School  of  War  ton.  219 

unintelligible.  In  truth  Shakspere's  language  is  one 
of  his  principal  beauties;  and  he  has  no  less  advantage 
over  your  Addisons  and  Rowes  in  this,  than  in  those 
other  great  excellencies  you  mention.  Every  word  in 
him  is  a  picture."  He  then  quotes  a  passage  from 
"Richard  III.,"  and  continues,  "Pray  put  me  the 
following  lines  into  the  tongue  of  our  modern  dramat- 
ics. To  me  they  appear  untranslatable,  and  if  this  be 
the  case,  our  language  is  greatly  degenerated." 

Warton  further  protests  against  the  view  which 
ascribed  the  introduction  of  true  taste  in  literature 
to  the  French.  *' Shakspere  and  Milton  imitated  the 
Italians  and  not  the  French."  He  recommends  also 
the  reintroduction  of  the  preternatural  into  poetry. 
There  are  some,  he  says,  who  think  that  poetry  has 
suffered  by  becoming  too  rational,  deserting  fairyland, 
and  laying  aside  "descriptions  of  magic  and  enchant- 
ment," and  he  quotes,  a  propos  of  this  the  famous 
stanza  about  the  Hebrides  in  "  The  Castle  of  Indo- 
lence."* The  false  refinement  of  the  French  has  made 
them  incapable  of  enjoying  "the  terrible  graces  of  our 
irregular  Shakspere,  especially  in  his  scenes  of  magic 
and  incantations.  These  Gothic  charms  are  in  truth 
more  striking  to  the  imagination  than  the  classi- 
cal. The  magicians  of  Ariosto,  Tasso,  and  Spenser 
have  more  powerful  spells  than  those  of  Apollonius, 
Seneca,  and  Lucan.  The  enchanted  forest  of  Ismeni 
is  more  awfully  and  tremendously  poetical  than  even 
the  grove  which  Caesar  orders  to  be  cut  down  in 
Lucan  (i.  iii.  400),  which  was  so  full  of  terrors  that, 
at  noonday  or  midnight,  the  priest  himself  dared  not 
approach  it — 

"  '  Dreading  the  demon  of  the  grove  to  meet.' 
*  See  ante,  p.  94. 


2  29  t/^  History  of  English  %ofnantictsm. 

Who  that  sees  the  sable  plumes  waving  on  the  pro- 
digious helmet  in  the  Castle  of  Otranto,  and  the 
gigantic  arm  on  the  top  of  the  great  staircase,  is  not 
more  affected  than  with  the  paintings  of  Ovid  and 
Apuleius?  What  a  group  of  dreadful  images  do  we 
meet  with  in  the  Edda!  The  Runic  poetry  abounds 
in  them.  Such  is  Gray's  thrilling  Ode  on  the  '  De- 
scent of  Odin.'  " 

Warton  predicts  that  Pope's  fame  as  a  poet  will  ulti- 
mately rest  on  his  "Windsor  Forest,"  his  "Epistle 
of  Eloisa  to  Abelard,"  and  "  The  Rape  of  the  Lock." 
To  this  prophecy  time  has  already,  in  part,  given 
the  lie.  Warton  preferred  "Windsor  Forest"  and 
"Eloisa"  to  the  "Moral  Essays"  because  they  be- 
longed to  a  higher  kind  of  poetry.  Posterity  likes 
the  "  Moral  Essays  "  better  because  they  are  better  of 
their  kind.  They  were  the  natural  fruit  of  Pope's 
genius  and  of  his  time,  while  the  others  were  artificial. 
We  can  go  to  Wordsworth  for  nature,  to  Byron  for 
passion,  and  to  a  score  of  poets  for  both,  but  Pope  re- 
mains unrivaled  in  his  peculiar  field.  In  other  words, 
we  value  what  is  characteristic  in  the  artist;  the  one 
thing  which  he  does  best,  the  precise  thing  which  he 
can  do  and  no  one  else  can.  But  Warton's  mistake  is 
significant  of  the  changing  literary  standards  of  his 
age;  and  his  essay  is  one  proof  out  of  many  that  the 
English  romantic  movement  was  not  entirely  without 
self-conscious  aims,  but  had  its  critical  formulas  and 
its  programme,  just  as  Queen  Anne  classicism  had. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
Ubc  (5otbic  "Kevival. 

One  of  Thomas  Warton's  sonnets  was  addressed  to 
Richard  Hurd,  afterward  Bishop  of  Lichfield  and  Cov- 
entry, and  later  of  Worcester.  Hurd  was  a  friend  of 
Gray  and  Mason,  and  his  "Letters  on  Chivalry  and 
Romance  "  (1762)  helped  to  initiate  the  romantic  move- 
ment. They  perhaps  owed  their  inspiration,  in  part, 
to  Sainte  Palaye's  "  Memoires  sur  I'ancienne  Cheval- 
erie,"  the  first  volume  of  which  was  issued  in  1759, 
though  the  third  and  concluding  volume  appeared 
only  in  1781.  This  was  a  monumental  work  and,  as  a 
standard  authority,  bears  much  the  same  relation  to 
the  literature  of  its  subject  that  Mallet's  "  Histoire 
de  Dannemarc  "  bears  to  all  the  writing  on  Runic 
mythology  that  was  done  in  Europe  during  the  eight- 
eenth-century. Jean  Baptiste  de  la  Curne  de  Sainte 
Pa  lay  e  was  a  scholar  of  wide  learning,  not  only  in  the 
history  of  mediaeval  institutions  but  in  old  French 
dialects.  He  went  to  the  south  of  France  to  familiar- 
ize himself  with  Provencal:  collected  a  large  library 
of  Provencal  books  and  manuscripts,  and  published  in 
1774  his  "Histoire  des  Troubadours."  Among  his 
other  works  are  a  "  Dictionary  of  French  Antiquities," 
a  glossary  of  Old  French,  and  an  edition  of  "  Aucassin 
et  Nicolete."  Mrs.  Susannah  Dobson,  who  wrote 
"Historical    Anecdotes   of    Heraldry   and   Chivalry" 


2  22  A  History  of  English  ^gmanticisra. 

(1795),  made  an  English  translation  of  Sainte  Palaye's 
"History  of  the  Troubadours"  in  1779,  and  of  his 
"Memoirs  of  Ancient  Chivalry  "  in  1784. 

The  purpose  of  Kurd's  letters  was  to  prove  "  the 
pre-eminence  of  the  Gothic  manners  and  fictions,  as 
adapted  to  the  ends  of  poetry,  above  the  classic." 
"  The  greatest  geniuses  of  our  own  and  foreign  coun- 
tries," he  afifirms,  "such  as  Ariosto  and  Tasso  in" 
/       Italy,    and    Spenser    and    Milton    in    England,    were 

C  seduced  by  these  barbarities  of  their  forefathers;/ 
were  even  charmed  by  the  Gothic  romances.  Wai 
this  caprice  and  absurdity  in  them?  Or  may  there  not 
be  something  in  the  Gothic  Romance  peculiarly  suited 
to  the  views  of  a  genius  and  to  the  ends  of  poetry? 
And  may  not  the  philosophic  moderns  have  gone  too 
far  in  their  perpetual  ridicule  and  contempt  of  it? " 
After  a  preliminary  discussion  of  the  origin  of  chiv- 
alry and  knight-errantry  and  of  the  ideal  knightly 
characteristics,  "  Prowess,  Generosity,  Gallantry,  and 
Religion,"  which  he  derives  from  the  military  necessi- 
ties of  the  feudal  system,  he  proceeds  to  establish  a 
"remarkable  correspondency  between  the  manners  of 
e  old  heroic  times,  as  painted  by  their  great  roman- 
cer, Homer,  and  those  which  are  represented  to  us  in 
the  books  of  modern  knight-errantry."  He  compares, 
e.  g.,  the  Lasstrygonians,  Cyclopes,  Circes,  and  Calyp- 
sos  of  Homer,  with  the  giants,  paynims,  sorceresses 
encountered  by  the  champions  of  romance;  the  Greek 
dotSot  with  the  minstrels;  the  Olympian  games  with 
tournaments;  and  the  exploits  of  Hercules  and  The- 
seus, in  quelling  dragons  and  other  monsters,  with  the 
similar  emprises  of  Lancelot  and  Amadis  de  Gaul. 
The  critic  is  daring  enough  to  give  the  Gothic  man- 


11 


The  Gothic  'Revival.  223 

ners  the  preference  over  the  heroic.  Homer,  he  says, 
if  he  could  have  known  both,  would  have  chosen  the 
former  by  reason  of  "the  improved  gallantry  of  the 
feudal  times,  and  the  superior  solemnity  of  their 
superstitions.  The  gallantry  which  inspirited  the 
feudal  times  was  of  a  nature  to  furnish  the  poet  with 
/  finer  scenes  and  subjects  of  description,  in  every  view, 
than  the  simple  and  uncontrolled  barbarity  of  the  Gre- 
cian. .  .  There  was  a  dignity,  a  magnificence,  a  va- 
riety in  the  feudal,  which  the  other  wanted." 

An  equal  advantage,   thinks  Hurd,  the    romancers 
enjoyed  over  the  pagan  poets  in  the  point  of  super- 
natural machinery.      "  For  the  more  solemn  fancies  of  i 
witchcraft  and  incantation,  the  horrors  of  the  Gothic] 
were    above    measure    striking    and    terrible.      The  \ 
mummeries  of  the   pagan  priests  were  childish,  but 

Kthe     Gothic     enchanters      shook     and     alarmed     all 
nature.   .   .     You  would  not  compare  the  Canidia  of 
"^  Horace   with  the    witches    in   'Macbeth.'     And  what 
I  are  Virgil's    myrtles,  dropping  blood,  to  Tasso's  en- 
I   chanted    forest?   .    .    .     The    fancies  of   our   modern 
1  bards  are  not  only  more  gallant,  but   .    ,    .    more  sub- 
lime, more  terrible,  more  alarming  than  those  of  the    ^ 
I  classic    fables.      In    a    word,    you    will    find    that    the     [ 
manners  they  paint,  and  the  superstitions  they  adopt, 
are  the  more  poetical  for  being  Gothic." 

Evidently  the  despised  ''Gothick"  of  Addison — as  ; 
Mr.  Howells  puts  it — was  fast  becoming  the  admired 
"Gothic"  of  Scott.  This  pronunciamento  of  very 
advanced  romantic  doctrine  came  out  several  years 
before  Percy's  "Reliques"  and  "The  Castle  of 
Otranto."  It  was  only  a  few  years  later  than  Thomas 
Warton's   "Observations  on  the  Faerie  Queene"  and 


/ 

^ 


224  A  History  of  English  'T^pmanticism, 

Joseph's  ''Essay  on  Pope,"  but  its  views  were  much 
more  radical.  Neither  of  the  Wartons  would  have 
ventured  to  pronounce  the  Gothic  manners  superior 
to  the  Homeric,  as  materials  for  poetry,  whatever,  in 
his  secret  heart,  he  might  have  thought.*  To  John- 
son such  an  opinion  must  have  seemed  flat  blasphemy. 
Hurd  accounts  for  the  contempt  into  which  the 
Gothic  had  fallen  on  the  ground  that  the  feudal  ages 
had  never  had  the  good  fortune  to  possess  a  great 
poet,  like  Homer,  capable  of  giving  adequate  artistic 
expression  to  their  life  and  ideals.  Carent  vate  sacro. 
Spenser  and  Tasso,  he  thinks,  "came  too  late,  and  it 
was  impossible  for  them  to  paint  truly  and  perfectly 
what  was  no  longer  seen  or  believed.  .  .  As  it  is, 
we  may  take  a  guess  of  what  the  subject  was  capable 
of  affording  to  real  genius  from  the  rude  sketches  we 
have  of  it  in  the  old  romancers.  .  .  The  ablest 
writers  of  Greece  ennobled  the  system  of  heroic 
manners,  while  it  was  fresh  and  flourishing;  and  their 
works  being  masterpieces  of  composition,  so  fixed  the 
credit  of  it  in  the  opinion  of  the  world,  that  no 
revolution  of  time  and  taste  could  afterward  shake  it. 
Whereas  the  Gothic,  having  been  disgraced  in  their 
.  infancy  by  bad  writers,  and  a  new  set  of  manners 
\  springing  up  before  there  were  any  better  to  do  them 
,  justice,  they  could  never  be  brought  into  vogue  by  the 
attempts  of  later  poets. 'N  Moreover,  "the  Gothic 
manners  of  chivalry,  as  springing  out  of  the  feudal 
system,  were  as  singular  as  that  system  itself;  so 
that  when  that  political  constitution  vanished  out  of 
Europe,    the  manners   that   belonged    to   it  were   no 

*  But  compare  the  passage  last  quoted  with  the  one  from  Warton's 
essay  ante,  p.  219. 


The  Gothic 'Revival.  ^-   '       225 

longer  seen  or  understood.  There  was  no  example 
of  any  such  manners  remaining  on  the  face  of  the 
earth.  And  as  they  never  did  subsist  but  once,  and 
are  never  likely  to  subsist  again,  people  would  be  led 
of  course  to  think  and  speak  of  them  as  romantic  and 
unnatural." 

Even  so,  he  thinks  that  the  Renaissance  poets, 
Ariosto  and  Spenser,  owe  their  finest  effects  not  to 
their  tinge  of  classical  culture  but  to  their  romantic 
materials.  Shakspere  ''is  greater  when  he  uses 
Gothic  manners  and  machinery,  than  when  he  em- 
ploys classical."  Tasso,  to  be  sure,  tried  to  trim 
between  the  two,  by  giving  an  epic  form  to  his 
romantic  subject-matter,  but  Hurd  pronounces  his 
imitations  of  the  ancients  "faint  and  cold  and 
almost  insipid,  when  compared  with  his  original 
fictions.  .  .  If  it  was  not  for  these  lies  \jnagnan- 
ima  viensogna\  of  Gothic  invention,  I  should  scarcely 
be  disposed  to  give  the  'Gierusalemme  Liberata' 
a  second  reading."  Nay,  Milton  himself,  though 
finally  choosing  the  classic  model,  did  so  only  after 
long  hesitation.  "  His  favorite  subject  was  Arthur 
and  the  Knights  of  the  Round  Table.  On  this  he  had 
fixed  for  the  greater  part  of  his  life.  What  led  him 
to  change  his  mind  was  partly,  as  I  suppose,  his 
growing  fanaticism;  partly  his  ambition  to  take  a 
different  route  from  Spenser;  but  chiefly,  perhaps,  the 
discredit  into  which  the  stories  of  chivalry  had  now 
fallen  by  the  immortal  satire  of  Cervantes.  Yet  we 
see  through  all  his  poetry,  where  his  enthusiasm 
flames  out  most,  a  certain  predilection  for  the  legends 
of  chivalry  before  the  fables  of  Greece."  Hurd  says 
that,  if  the  "  Faerie  Queene  "  be  regarded  as  a  Gothic 


226  <i/l  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

poem,  it  will  be  seen  to  have  true  unity  of  design, 
a  merit  which  even  the  Wartons  had  denied  it. 
"When  an  architect  examines  a  Gothic  structure  by 
Grecian  rules  he  finds  nothing  but  deformity.  But 
the  Gothic  architecture  has  its  own  rules  by  which, 
when  it  comes  to  be  examined,  it  is  seen  to  have  its 
merit,  as  well  as  the  Grecian." 

The  essayist  complains  that  the  Gothic  fables  fell 
into  contempt  through  the  influence  of  French  critics 
who  ridiculed  and  disparaged  the  Italian  romancers, 
Ariosto  and  Tasso.  The  English  critics  of  the 
''"Restoration — Davenant,  Hobbes,  Shaftesbury — took 
their  cue  from  the  French,  till  these  pseudo-classical 
principles  "grew  into  a  sort  of  a  cant,  with  which 
Rymer  and  the  rest  of  that  school  filled  their  flimsy 
essays  and  rumbling  prefaces.  .  .  The  exact  but 
cold  Boileau  happened  to  say  something  about  the 
clinquant  of  Tasso,"  and  "Mr.  Addison,*  who  gave 
the  law  in  taste  here,  took  it  up  and  sent  it  about,"  so 
that  "it  became  a  sort  of  watchword  among  the 
critics."  "What  we  have  gotten,"  concludes  the 
final  letter  of  the  series,  "by  this  revolution,  is  a 
great  deal  of  good  sense.  What  we  have  lost  is  a 
world  of  fine  fabling,  the  illusion  of  which  is  so  grate- 
ful to  the  charmed  spirit  that,  in  spite  of  philosophy 
and  fashion  *  Faery  '  Spenser  still  ranks  highest 
among  the  poets;  I  mean  with  all  those  who  are 
either  come  of  that  house,  or  have  any  kindness 
for  it." 

We  have  seen  that,  during  the  classical  period, 
"  Gothic,"  as  a  term  in  literary  criticism,  was  synony- 
mous with  barbarous,  lawless,  and  tawdry.     Addison 

*See  ante,  p.  49. 


The  Gothic  '^vival.  227 

instructs  his  public  that  ''  the  taste  of  most  of  our 
English  poets,  as  well  as  readers,  is  extremely 
Gothic."*  After  commending  the  French  critics, 
Bouhours  and  Boileau,  for  their  insistence  upon  good 
sense,  justness  of  thought,  simplicity,  and  natural- 
ness he  goes  on  as  follows:  "Poets  who  want  this 
strength  of  genius,  to  give  that  majestic  simplicity  to 
nature  which  we  so  much  admire  in  the  works  of  the 
ancients,  are  forced  to  hunt  after  foreign  ornaments, 
and  not  to  let  any  piece  of  wit,  of  what  kind  soever, 
escape  them.  I  look  upon  these  writers  as  Goths  in 
poetry,  who,  like  those  in  architecture,  not  being 
able  to  come  up  to  the  beautiful  simplicity  of  the  old 
Greeks  and  Romans,  have  endeavored  to  supply  its 
place  with  all  the  extravagances  of  an  irregular  fancy." 
In  the  following  paper  (No.  63),  an  "allegorical 
vision  of  the  encounter  of  True  and  False  Wit,"  he 
discovers,  "  in  a  very  dark  grove,  a  monstrous  fabric, 
built  after  the  Gothic  manner  and  covered  with  in- 
numerable devices  in  that  barbarous  kind  of  sculp- 
ture." This  temple  is  consecrated  to  the  God  of 
Dullness,  who  is  "dressed  in  the  habit  of  a  monk." 
In  his  essay  "  On  Taste  "  (No.  409)  he  says,  "  I  have 
endeavored,  in  several  of  my  speculations,  to  ban- 
ish this  Gothic  taste  which  has  taken  possession 
among  us." 

The  particular  literary  vice  which  Addison  strove  to 
correct  in  these  papers  was  that  conceited  style  which 
infected  a  certain  school  of  seventeenth-century  poe- 
try, running  sometimes  into  such  puerilities  as  ana- 
grams, acrostics,  echo-songs,  rebuses,  and  verses  in 
the   shape   of    eggs,    wings,     hour-glasses,    etc.     He 

*  Spectator,  No.  62, 


2  28  zA  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

names,  as  special  representatives  of  this  affectation, 
Herbert,  Cowley,  and  Sylvester.  But  it  is  significant 
that  Addison  should  have  described  this  fashion  as 
Gothic.  It  has  in  reality  nothing  in  common  with  the 
sincere  and  loving  art  of  the  old  builders.  He  might 
just  as  well  have  called  it  classic;  for,  as  he  acknowl- 
edges, devices  of  the  kind  are  to  be  found  in  the  Greek 
anthology,  and  Ovid  was  a  poet  given  to  conceits. 
Addison  was  a  writer  of  pure  taste,  but  the  coldness 
and  timidity  of  his  imagination,  and  the  maxims  of 
the  critical  school  to  which  he  belonged,  made  him 
mistake  for  spurious  decoration  the  efflorescence  of 
that  warm,  creative  fancy  which  ran  riot  in  Gothic 
art.  The  grotesque,  which  was  one  expression  of 
this  sappy  vigor,  was  abhorrent  to  Addison.  The  art 
and  poetry  of  his  time  were  tame,  where  Gothic  art 
was  wild;  dead  where  Gothic  was  alive.  He  could 
not  sympathize  with  it,  nor  understand  it.  "  Vous 
ne  pouvez  pas  le  comprendre;  vous  avez  toujours  hai 
la  vie." 

I  have  quoted  Vicesimus  Knox's  complaint  that  the 
antiquarian  spirit  was  spreading  from  architecture  and 
numismatics  into  literature.*  We  meet  with  satire 
upon  antiquaries  many  years  before  this;  in  Pope,  in 
Akenside's  Spenserian  poem  "The  Virtuoso  (1737); 
in  Richard  Owen  Cambridge's  "  Scribleriad"  (1751): 

"  See  how  her  sons  with  generous  ardor  strive. 
Bid  every  long-lost  Gothic  art  revive,   .    .    . 
Each  Celtic  character  explain,  or  show 
How  Britons  ate  a  thousand  years  ago; 
On  laws  of  jousts  and  tournaments  declaim, 
Or  shine,  the  rivals  of  the  herald's  fame. 

*  See  anU,  p.  211. 


The  Gothic  l^evtval.  229 

But  chief  the  Saxon  wisdom  be  your  care, 

Preserve  their  idols  and  their  fanes  repair; 

And  may  their  deep  mythology  be  shown 

By  Seater's  wheel  and  Thor's  tremendous  throne."* 

The  most  notable  instance  that  we  encounter  qf 
virtuosity  invading  the  neighboring  realm  of  literature 
is  in  the  case  of  Strawberry  Hill  and  "The  Castle ^^' 
of  Otranto. "  Horace  Walpole,  the  son  of  the  great 
prime  minister,  Robert  Walpole,  was  a  person  of 
varied  accomplishments  and  undoubted  cleverness. 
He  was  a  man  of  fashion,  a  man  of  taste,  and  a  man 
of  letters;  though,  in  the  first  of  these  characters, 
he  entertained  or  affected  a  contempt  for  the  last, 
not  uncommon  in  dilettante  authors  and  dandy 
artists,  who  belong  to  the  l/eau  monde  or  are  other- 
wise socially  of  high  place,  teste  Congreve,  and 
even  Byron,  that  "rhyming  peer."  Walpole,  as  we 
have  seen,  had  been  an  Eton  friend  of  Gray  and  had 
traveled — and  quarreled — with  him  upon  the  Conti- 
nent, Returning  home,  he  got  a  seat  in  Parliament, 
the  entree  at  court,  and  various  lucrative  sinecures 
through  his  father's  influence.  He  was  an  assiduous 
courtier,  a  keen  and  spiteful  observer,  a  busy  gossip 
and  retailer  of  social  tattle.  His  feminine  turn  of 
mind  made  him  a  capital  letter-writer;  and   his  corre- 

*"  Works  of  Richard  Owen  Cambridge,"  pp.  198-99.  Cambridge 
was  one  of  the  Spenserian  imitators.  See  ante,  p.  8g,  note.  In 
Lady  Luxborough's  correspondence  with  Shenstone  there  is  much 
mention  of  a  Mr.  Miller,  a  neighboring  proprietor,  who  was  devoted 
to  Gothic.  On  the  appearance  of  "The  Scribleriad,"  she  writes 
(January  28,  1751),  "  I  imagine  this  poem  is  not  calculated  to 
please  Mr.  Miller  and  the  rest  of  the  Gothic  gentlemen;  for  this  Mr. 
Cambridge  expresses  a  dislike  to  the  introducing  or  reviving  tastes 
and  fashions  that  are  inferior  to  the  modern  taste  of  our  country." 


230  iA  History  of  English  l^omanticism. 

spondence,  particularly  with  Sir  Horace  Mann,  English 
ambassador  at  Florence,  is  a  running  history  of  back- 
stairs diplomacy,  court  intrigue,  subterranean  politics, 
and  fashionable  scandal  during  the  reigns  of  the  sec- 
ond and  third  Georges.  He  also  figures  as  an  historian 
of  an  amateurish  sort,  by  virtue  of  his  "Catalogue  of 
Royal  and  Noble  Authors,"  "  Anecdotes  of  Painting," 
and  "Historic  Doubts  on  Richard  III."  Our  present 
concern  with  him,  however,  lies  quite  outside  of  these. 
It  was  about  1750  that  Walpole,  who  had  bought 
a  villa  at  Strawberry  Hill,  on  the  Thames  near  Wind- 
sor, which  had  formerly  belonged  to  Mrs.  Chenevix, 
the  fashionable  London  toy-woman,  began  to  turn  his 
house  into  a  miniature  Gothic  castle,  in  which  he  is 
said  to  have  "outlived  three  sets  of  his  own  battle- 
ments." These  architectural  experiments  went  on 
for  some  twenty  years.  They  excited  great  interest 
and  attracted  many  visitors,  and  Walpole  may  be  re- 
garded as  having  given  a  real  impetus  to  the  revival  of 
pointed  architecture.  He  spoke  of  Strawberry  Hill 
as  a  castle,  but  it  was,  in  fact,  an  odd  blend  of  eccle- 
siastical and  castellated  Gothic  applied  to  domestic 
uses.  He  had  a  cloister,  a  chapel,  a  round  tower,  a 
gallery,  a  "refectory,"  a  stair-turret  with  Gothic 
balustrade,  stained  windows,  mural  scutcheons,  and 
Gothic  paper-hangings.  Walpole's  mock-gothic  be- 
came something  of  a  laughing-stock,  after  the  true 
principles  of  mediaeval  architecture  were  better  un- 
derstood. Since  the  time  when  Inigo  Jones,  court 
architect  to  James  I.,  came  back  from  Italy,  where  he 
had  studied  the  works  of  Palladio;  and  especially  since 
the  time  when  his  successor,  Sir  Christopher  Wren, 
had  rebuilt  St.  Paul's  in  the  Italian  Renaissance  style, 


i 


The  Gothic  'Revival.  231 

after  the  great  fire  of  London  in  1664,  Gothic  had 
fallen  more  and  more  into  disuse.  ''  If  in  the  history 
of  British  art,"  says  Eastlake,  "there  is  one  period 
more  distinguished  than  another  for  the  neglect  of 
Gothic,  it  was  certainly  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century."  But  architecture  had  this  advantage  over 
other  arts,  it  had  left  memorials  more  obvious  and  im- 
posing. Mediaeval  literature  was  known  only  to  the 
curious,  to  collectors  of  manuscript  romances  and 
black-letter  ballads.  The  study  of  mediaeval  arts  like 
tempera  painting,  illuminating,  glass-staining,  wood- 
carving,  tapestry  embroidery;  of  the  science  of 
blazonry,  of  the  details  of  ancient  armor  and  cos- 
tumes, was  the  pursuit  of  specialists.  But  West- 
minster Abbey,  the  Tower  of  London,  Salisbury 
Cathedral,  and  York  Minster,  ruins  such  as  Melrose 
and  Fountain  Abbeys,  Crichton  Castle,  and  a  hundred 
others  were  impressive  witnesses  for  the  civilization 
that  had  built  them  and  must,  sooner  or  later,  demand 
respectful  attention.  Hence  it  is  not  strange  that  th 
Gothic  revival  went  hand  in  hand  with  the  romantic 
movement  in  literature,  if  indeed  it  did  not  give  it  its 
original  impulse.   - 

"It   is    impossible,"    says    Eastlake,*   speaking    of 
Walpole,  "  to  peruse  either  the  letters  or  the  romances 
of  this  remarkable  man,  without  being  struck  by  the_ 
unmistakable    evidence    which    they    contain    of    his'\ 
mediaeval    predilections.       His    '  Castle    of    Otranto  ' 
was  perhaps  the  first  modern  work  of  fiction  which  ! 
depended  for  its  interest  on  the  incidents  of  a  chival- 
rous age,  and  it   thus  became  the  prototype  of  that 
class  of  novel  which  was  afterward  imitated  by  Mrs. 
*  "  History  of  the  Gothic  Revival,"  p.  43. 


232  c//  History  of  English  'T^omanticism. 

Radcliffe  and  perfected  by  Sir  Walter  Scott.  The 
feudal  tyrant,  the  venerable  ecclesiastic,  the  forlorn 
but  virtuous  damsel,  the  castle  itself  with  its  moats 
and  drawbridge,  its  gloomy  dungeons  and  solemn 
corridors,  are  all  derived  from  a  mine  of  interest 
which  has  since  been  worked  more  efficiently  and  to 
better  profit.  But  to  Walpole  must  be  ^war^lrd  thr- 
credit  of  its  discovery  and  first  empTdyment." 

Walpole's  complete  works*  contain  elaborate  illus- 
trations and  ground  plans  of  Strawberry  Hill.  East- 
lake  gives  a  somewhat  technical  account  of  its 
constructive  features,  its  gables,  buttresses,  finials, 
lath  and  plaster  parapets,  wooden  pinnacles  and,  what 
its  proprietor  himself  describes  as  his  "  lean  windows 
fattened  with  rich  saints."  From  this  I  extract  only 
the  description  of  the  interior,  which  was  "just  what 
one  might  expect  from  a  man  who  possessed  a  vague 
admiration  for  Gothic  without  the  knowledge  neces- 
sary for  a  proper  adaptation  of  its  features.  Ceilings, 
screens,  niches,  etc.,  are  all  copied,  or  rather  parodied, 
from  existing  examples,  but  with  utter  disregard  for 
the  original  purpose  of  the  design.  To  Lord  Orford, 
Gothic  was  Gothic,  and  that  sufficed.  He  would  have 
turned  an  altar-slab  into  a  hall- table,  or  made  a  cup- 
board of  a  piscina,  with  the  greatest  complacency,  if 
it  only  served  his  purpose.  Thus  we  find  that  in  the 
north  bed-chamber,  when  he  wanted  a  model  for  his 
chimney-piece,  he  thought  he  could  not  do  better 
than  adopt  the  form  of  Bishop  Dudley's  tomb  in 
Westminster  Abbey.  He  found  a  pattern  for  the  piers 
of  his   garden   gate  in  the   choir  of   Ely  Cathedral." 

*  "  Works  of  Horace  Walpole,  Earl  of  Orford,"  in  five  volumes, 
1798.      "A  Description  of  Strawberry  Hill,"  Vol.  II.  pp.  395-516. 


The  Gothic  Revival.  233 

The  ceiling  of  the  gallery  borrowed  a  design  from 
Henry  VII. 's  Chapel;  the  entrance  to  the  same  apart- 
ment from  the  north  door  of  St.  Alban's;  and  one  side 
of  the  room  from  Archbishop  Bourchier's  tomb  at 
Canterbury.  Eastlake's  conclusion  is  that  Walpole's 
Gothic,  ".though  far  from  reflecting  the  beauties  of 
a  former  age,  or  anticipating  those  which  were 
destined  to  proceed  from  a  re-development  of  the 
style,  still  holds  a  position  in  the  history  of  English 
art  which  commands  our  respect,  for  it  served  to 
sustain  a  cause  which  had  otherwise  been  well-nigh 
forsaken." 

James  Fergusson,  in  his  "  History  of  the  Modern 
Styles  of  Architecture,"  says  of  Walpole's  structures: 
'*  We  now  know  that  these  are  very  indifferent  speci- 
mens of  the  true  Gothic  art,  and  are  at  a  loss  to 
understand  how  either  their  author  or  his  contem- 
poraries could  ever  fancy  that  these  very  queer  carv- 
ings were  actual  reproductions  of  the  details  of  York 
Minster,  or  other  equally  celebrated  buildings,  from 
which  they  were  supposed  to  have  been  copied.'* 
Fergusson  adds  that  the  fashion  set  by  Walpole  soon 
found  many  followers  both  in  church  and  house  archi- 
tecture, "and  it  is  surprising  what  a  number  of  castles 
were  built  which  had  nothing  castellated  about  them 
except  a  nicked  parapet  and  an  occasional  window  in 
the  form  of  a  cross."  That  school  of  bastard  Gothic 
illustrated  by  the  buildings  of  Batty  Langley,  and 
other  early  restorers  of  the  style,  bears  an  analogy 
with  the  imitations  of  old  English  poetry  in  the  last 
century.  There  was  the  same  prematurity  in  both, 
the  same  defective  knowledge,  crudity,  uncertainty, 
incorrectness,    feebleness    of    invention,    mixture    of 


234  <^  History  of  English  T^manticism. 

ancient  and  modern  manners.  It  was  not  until  the 
time  of  Pugin  *  that  the  details  of  the  mediaeval  build- 
ing art  were  well  enough  understood  to  enable  the 
architect  to  work  in  the  spirit  of  that  art,  yet  not  as 
a  servile  copyist,  but  with  freedom  and  originality. 
Meanwhile,  one  service  that  Walpole  and  his  followers 
did,  by  reviving  public  interest  in  Gothic,  was  to 
arrest  the  process  of  dilapidation  and  save  the  crum- 
bling remains  of  many  a  half-ruinous  abbey,  castle,  or 
baronial  hall.  Thus,  "when  about  a  hundred  years 
since,  Rhyddlan  Castle,  in  North  Wales,  fell  into  the 
possession  of  Dr.  Shipley,  Dean  of  St.  Asaph,  the 
massive  walls  had  been  prescriptively  used  as  stone 
quarries,  to  which  any  neighboring  occupier  who 
wanted  building  materials  might  resort;  and  they  are 
honey-combed  all  round  as  high  as  a  pick-ax  could 
reach."  f  "Walpole,"  writes  Leslie  Stephen,  "is 
almost  the  first  modern  Englishman  who  found  out 
that  our  old  cathedrals  were  really  beautiful.  He  dis- 
covered that  a  most  charming  toy  might  be  made  of 
medisevalism.  Strawberry  Hill,  with  all  its  gimcracks, 
its  pasteboard  battlements  and  stained-paper  carvings, 
was  the  lineal  ancestor  of  the  new  law-courts.  The 
restorers  of  churches,  the  manufacturers  of  stained 
glass,  the  modern  decorators  and  architects  of  all 
varieties,  the  Ritualists  and  the  High  Church  party, 
should  think  of  him  with  kindness.    .    .     That  he  was 

*  Pugin's  "True  Principles  of  Gothic  Architecture"  was  pub- 
lished in  1841. 

f  "  Sketches  of  Eminent  Statesmen  and  Writers,"  A.  Hayward 
(1880),  In  a  note  to  "  Marmion  "  (1808)  Scott  said  that  the  ruins  of 
Crichton  Castle,  remarkable  for  the  richness  and  elegance  of  its 
stone  carvings,  were  then  used  as  a  cattle-pen  and  a  sheep-fold. 


The  Gothic  'Revival,  235 

quite  conscious  of  the  necessity  for  more  serious 
study,  appears  in  his  letters;  in  one  of  which,  e.  g.,  he 
proposes  a  systematic  history  of  Gothic  architecture 
such  as  has  since  been  often  executed,"*  Mr. 
Stephen  adds  that  Walpole's  friend  Gray  ''shared 
his  Gothic  tastes,  with  greatly  superior  knowledge." 

Walpole  did  not  arrive  at  his  Gothicism  by  the  gate 
of  literature.  It  was  merely  a  specialized  develop- 
ment of  his  tastes  as  a  virtuoso  and  collector.  The 
museum  of  curiosities  which  he  got  together  at  Straw- 
berry Hill  included  not  only  suits  of  armor,  stained 
glass,  and  illuminated  missals,  but  a  miscellaneous 
treasure  of  china  ware,  enamels,  faience,  bronzes, 
paintings,  engravings,  books,  coins,  bric-a-brac,  and 
memorabilia  such  as  Cardinal  Wolsey's  hat.  Queen 
Elizabeth's  glove,  and  the  spur  that  WiUiam  III.  wore 
at  the  Battle  of  the  Boyne.  Walpole's  romanticism 
was  a  thin  veneering;  underneath  it,  he  was  a  man  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  His  opinions  on  all  subjects 
were,  if  not  inconsistent,  at  any  rate  notoriously 
whimsical  and  ill-assorted.  Thus  in  spite  of  his 
admiration  for  Gray  and  his — temporary — interest  in 
Ossian,  Chatterton,  and  Percy's  ballads,  he  ridiculed 
Mallet's  and  Gray's  Runic  experiments,  spoke  con- 
temptuously of  Spenser,  Thomson,  and  Akenside, 
compared  Dante  to  "a  Methodist  parson  in  bedlam," 
and  pronounced  "A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream" 
"forty  times  more  nonsensical  than  the  worst  trans- 
lation of  any  Italian  opera-books. "  f  He  said  that 
poetry  died  with  Pope,  whose  measure  and  manner  he 

*  "  Hours  in  a  Library,"  Second  Series;  article,  "Horace  Wal- 
pole." 

f  Letter  to  Bentley,  February  23,  1755, 


236  <t/1  History  of  English  '^Romanticism. 

employed  in  his  own  verses.  It  has  been  observed 
that,  in  all  his  correspondence,  he  makes  but  a  single 
mention  of  Froissart's  "Chronicle,"  and  that  a  sneer 
at  Lady  Pomfret  for  translating  it. 

Accordingly  we  find,  on  turning  to  "The  Castle  of 
Otranto,"  that,  just  as  Walpole's  Gothicism  was  an 
accidental  "sport"  from  his  general  virtuosity;  so 
his  romanticism  was  a  casual  outgrowth  of  his  archi- 
tectural amusements.  Strawberry  Hill  begat  "The 
Castle  of  Otranto,"  whose  title  is  fitly  chosen,  since  it 
is  the  castle  itself  that  is  the  hero  of  the  book.  The 
human  characters  are  naught.  "  Shall  I  even  confess 
to  you,"  he  writes  to  the  Rev.  William  Cole  (March  9, 
1765),  "what  was  the  origin  of  this  romance?  I  waked 
one  morning  in  the  beginning  of  last  June  from  a 
dream,  of  which  all  I  could  recover  was,  that  I  had 
thought  myself  in  an  ancient  castle  (a  very  natural 
dream  for  a  head  filled,  like  mine,  with  Gothic  story), 
and  that,  on  the  uppermost  banister  of  a  great  stair- 
case, I  saw  a  gigantic  hand  in  armor.  In  the  evening 
I  sat  down  and  began  to  write,  without  knowing  in 
the  least  what  I  intended  to  say  or  relate.  The  work 
grew  on  my  hands.  .  .  In  short,  I  was  so  engrossed 
with  my  tale,  which  I  completed  in  less  than  two 
months,  that  one  evening  I  wrote  from  the  time  I  had 
drunk  my  tea,  about  six  o'clock,  till  half  an  hour 
after  one  in  the  morning." 

"The  Castle  of  Otranto,  A  Gothic  Story,"  was 
published  in  1765.*  According  to  the  title  page,  it 
was  translated  from  the  original  Italian  of  Onuphrio 
Muralto — a  sort  of  half-pun  on  the  author's  surname 

*  Five  hundred  copies,  says  Walpole,  were  struck  off  December  24, 
1764. 


The  Gothic  'l{evival.  237 

—by  W.  Marshall,  Gent.  This  mystification  was  kept 
up  in  the  preface,  which  pretended  that  the  book  had 
been  printed  at  Naples  in  black-letter  in  1529,  and  was 
found  in  the  library  of  an  old  Catholic  family  in  the 
north  of  England.  In  the  preface  to  his  second  edi- 
tion Walpole  described  the  work  as  "  an  attempt  to 
blend  the  two  kinds  of  romance,  the  ancient  and  the 
modern":  declared  that,  in  introducing  humorous 
dialogues  among  the  servants  of  the  castle,  he  had 
taken  nature  and  Shakspere  for  his  models;  and  fell 
foul  of  Voltaire  for  censuring  the  mixture  of  buf- 
foonery and  solemnity  in  Shakspere's  tragedies. 
Walpole's  claim  to  having  created  a  new  species  of 
romance  has  been  generally  allowed.  "His  initiative 
in  literature,"  says  Mr.  Stephen,  "  has  been  as  fruitful 
as  his  initiative  in  art.  *  The  Castle  of  Otranto,' 
and  the  'Mysterious  Mother^'  were  the  progenitors  j 
of  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  romances,  and  probably  had  a 
strong  influencT""'uporr~the  author  of  'Ivanhoe.' 
Frowning  castles  and  gloomy  monasteries,  knights  in, 
armor  and  ladies  in  distress,  and  monks,  and  nuns, 
and  hermits;  all  the  scenery  and  characters  that  have 
peopled  the  imagination  of  the  romantic  school,  may 
be  said  to  have  had  their  origin  on  the  night  when/ 
Walpole  lay  down  to  sleep,  his  head  crammed  full  of 
Wardour  Street  curiosities,  and  dreamed  that  he  saw 
a  gigantic  hand  in  armor  resting  on  the  banisters  of 
his  staircase." 

It  is  impossible  at  this  day  to  take  "The  Castle  of 
Otranto"  seriously,  and  hard  to  explain  the  respect  with 
which  it  was  once  mentioned  by  writers  of  authority. 
Warburton  called  it  "a  master-piece  in  the  Fable, 
and  a  new  species  likewise.    .    .     The  scene  is  laid  in 


238  (vf  History  of  English  'T{omanticism. 

Gothic  chivalry;  where  a  beautiful  imagination,  sup= 
ported  by  strength  of  judgment,  has  enabled  the 
reader  to  go  beyond  his  subject  and  effect  the  full 
purpose  of  the  ancient  tragedy;  /.  e.,  to  purge  the 
passions  by  pity  and  terror,  in  coloring  as  great  and 
harmonious  as  in  any  of  the  best  dramatic  writers." 
Byron  called  Walpole  the  author  of  the  last  tragedy  * 
and  the  first  romance  in  the  language.  Scott  wrote  of 
"The  Castle  of  Otranto":  "This  romance  has  been 
justly  considered,  not  only  as  the  original  and  model 
of  a  peculiar  species  of  composition  attempted  and 
successfully  executed  by  a  man  of  great  genius,  but 
as  one  of  the  standard  works  of  our  lighter  literature." 
Gray  in  a  letter  to  Walpole  (December  30,  1764), 
acknowledging  the  receipt  of  his  copy,  says:  "It 
makes  some  of  us  cry  a  little,  and  all  in  general  afraid 
to  go  to  bed  o'  nights."  Walpole's  masterpiece  can  no 
longer  make  anyone  cry  even  a  little;  and  instead  of 
keeping  us  out  of  bed,  it  sends  us  there — or  would,  if 
it  were  a  trifle  longer.  For  the  only  thing  that  is 
__tolerable  about  the  book  is  its  brevity,  and  a  certain 
rapidity  in  the  action.  Macaulay,  who"  confessesits 
absurdity  and  insipidity,  says  that  no  reader,  probably, 
ever  thought  it  dull.  "  The  story,  whatever  its  value 
may  be,  never  flags  for  a  single  moment.  There  are 
no  digressions,  or  unreasonable  descriptions,  or  long 
speeches.  Every  sentence  carries  the  action  forward. 
The  excitement  is  constantly  renewed."  Excitement 
is  too  strong  a  word  to  describe  any  emotion  which 
"  The  Castle  of  Otranto  "  is  now  capable  of  arousing. 
But  the  same  cleverness  which  makes  Walpole's  corre- 
spondence always  readable  saves  his  romance  from  the 
*"  The  Mysterious  Mother,"  begun  1766,  finished  1768. 


The  Gothic  Revival.  239 

unpardonable  sin — in  literature — of  tediousness.  It 
does  go  along  and  may  still  be  read  without  a  too 
painful  effort. 

There  is  nothing  very  new  in  the  plot,  which  has  all 
the  stock  properties  of  romantic  fiction,  as  common  in 
the  days  of  Sidney's  "  x\rcadia  "  as  in  those  of  Sylvanus 
Cobb.  Alfonso,  the  former  lord  of  Otranto,  had  been 
poisoned  in  Palestine  by  his  chamberlain  Ricardo,  who 
forged  a  will  making  himself  Alfonso's  heir.  To  make 
his  peace  with  God,  the  usurper  founded  a  church  and 
two  convents  in  honor  of  St.  Nicholas,  who  "appeared 
to  him  in  a  dream  and  promised  that  Ricardo's  posterity 
should  reign  in  Otranto  until  the  rightful  owner  should 
be  grown  too  large  to  inhabit  the  castle."  When  the 
story  opens,  this  prophecy  is  about  to  be  fulfilled. 
The  tyrant  Manfred,  grandson  of  the  usurper,  is  on  the 
point  of  celebrating  the  marriage  of  his  only  son,  when 
the  youth  is  crushed  to  death  by  a  colossal  helmet 
that  drops,  from  nobody  knows  where,  into  the  court- 
yard of  the  castle.  Gigantic  armor  haunts  the  castle 
piecemeal:  a  monstrous  gauntlet  is  laid  upon  the 
banister  of  the  great  staircase;  a  mailed  foot  appears 
in  one  apartment;  a  sword  is  brought  into  the  court- 
yard on  the  shoulders  of  a  hundred  men.  And  finally 
the  proprietor  of  these  fragmentary  apparitions,  in 
"the  form  of  Alfonso,  dilated  to  an  immense  magni- 
tude," throws  down  the  walls  of  the  castle,  pronounces 
the  words  "Behold  in  Theodore  the  true  heir  of  Al- 
fonso," and  with  a  clap  of  thunder  ascends  to  heaven. 
Theodore  is,  of  course,  the  young  peasant,  grandson 
of  the  crusader  by  a  fair  Sicilian  secretly  espoused  en 
route  ior  the.  Holy  Land;  and  he  is  identified  by  the 
strawberry  mark  of  old  romance,  in  this  instance  the 


240  tA  History  of  English  'T{pmanticism. 

figure  of  a  bloody  arrow  impressed  upon  his  shoulder. 
There  are  other  supernatural  portents,  such  as  a  skele- 
ton with  a  cowl  and  a  hollow  voice,  a  portrait  which 
descends  from  its  panel,  and  a  statue  that  bleeds  at 
the  nose. 

The  novel  feature  in  the  "  Castle  of  Otranto  "  was 
_its"Gothic  setting ;~the  "  wind  whistling  through  tlie~ 
battlements";  the  secret  trap-docjrpprtth  iron'Hng,  by 
*"*— which  Isabella  sought  to  make  her  escape.  "An  aw- 
ful silence  reigned  throughout  those  subterraneous 
regions,  except  now  and  then  some  blasts  of  wind  that 
shook  the  doors  she  had  passed,  and  which,  grating  on 
the  rusty  hinges,  were  re-echoed  through  that  long 
byrinth  of  darkness.  The  wind  extinguished  her 
candle,  but  an  imperfect  ray  of  clouded  moonshine 
gleamed  through  a  cranny  in  the  roof  of  the  vault  and 
fell  directly  on  the  spring  of  the  trap-door."  But 
Walpole's  mediaevalism  was  very  thin.  He  took  some 
pains  with  the  descnption  of  the  feudal  cavalcade  en- 
tering the  castle  gate  with  the  great  sword,  but  the 
passage  is  incorrect  and  poor  in  detail  compared  with 
similar  things  in  Scott.  The  book  was  not  an  histori- 
cai  romance,  and  the  manners,  sentiments,  language, 
all  were  modern.  Walpole  knew  little  about  the 
"Middle  Ages  and  was  not  in  touch  with  their  spirit. 
At  bottom  he  was  a  trifler,  a  fribble;  and  his  incurable 
superficiality,  dilettantism,  and  want  of  seriousness, 
made  all  his  real  cleverness  of  no  avail  when  applied  to 
such  a  subject  as  *'  The  Castle  of  Otranto.* 

*"The  Castle  of  Otranto  "  was  dramatized  by  Robert  Jephson, 
under  the  title  "  The  Count  of  Narbonne,"  put  on  at  Covent  Garden 
Theater  in  1781,  and  afterward  printed,  with  a  dedication  to  Wal- 
pole. 


The  Gothic  Revival.  241 

Walpole's  tragedy,  "The  Mysterious  Mother,"  has 
not  even  that  degree  of  importance  which  secures  his 
romance  a  niche  in  literary  history.  The  subject  was 
too  unnatural  to  admit  of  stage  presentation.  Incest, 
when  treated  in  the  manner  of  Sophocles  (Walpole  jus- 
tified himself  by  the  example  of  **CEdipus"),  or  even 
of  Ford,  or  of  Shelley,  may  possibly  claim  a  place 
among  the  themes  which  art  is  not  quite  forbidden  to 
touch;  but  when  handled  in  the  prurient  and  crudely 
melodramatic  fashion  of  this  particular  artist,  it  is 
merely  offensive.  "  The  Mysterious  Mother,"  indeed, 
is  even  more  absurd  than  horrible.  Gothic  machinery 
is  present,  but  it  is  of  the  slightest.  The  scene  of 
the  action  is  a  castle  at  Narbonne  and  the  chatelaine 
is  the  heroine  of  the  play.  The  other  characters  are 
knights,  friars,  orphaned  damsels,  and  feudal  retainers; 
there  is  mention  of  cloisters,  drawbridges,  theVaudois 
heretics,  and  the  assassination  of  Henri  III.  and 
Henri  IV. ;  and  the  author's  Whig  and  Protestant 
leanings  are  oddly  evidenced  in  his  exposure  of  priestly 
intrigues. 

"  The  Castle  of  Otranto  "  was  not  long  in  finding 
imitators.  One  of  the  first  of  these  was  Clara  Reeve's 
**  Champion  of  Virtue  "  (1777),  styled  on  its  title-page 
"A  Gothic  Story,"  and  reprinted  the  following  year 
as  "  The  Old  English  Baron."  Under  this  latter  title 
it  has  since  gone  through  thirteen  editions,  the  latest 
of  which,  in  1883,  gave  a  portrait  of  the  author.  Miss 
Reeve  had  previously  published  (1772)  "  The  Phoenix," 
a  translation  of  "Argenis,"  "a  romance  written  in 
Latin  about  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
by  John  Barclay,  a  Scotchman,  and  supposed  to  contain 
an  allegorical  account  of  the  civil  wars  of  France  during 


242  <i/l  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

the  reign  of  Henry  III.  "*  "  Pray,"  inquires  the  author 
of  "  The  Champion  of  Virtue  "  in  her  address  to  the 
reader,  "  did  you  ever  read  a  book  called,  '  The  Castle 
of  Otranto'  ?  If  you  have,  you  will  willingly  enter  with 
me  into  a  review  of  it.  But  perhaps  you  have  not 
read  it?  However,  you  have  heard  that  it  is  an  attempt 
to  blend  together  the  most  attractive  and  interesting 
circumstances  of  the  ancient  romance  and  modern 
novel.  .  .  The  conduct  of  the  story  is  artful  and 
judicious;  the  characters  are  admirably  drawn  and 
supported;  the  diction  polished  and  elegant;  yet  with 
all  these  brilliant  advantages,  it  palls  upon  the 
mind.  .  .  The  reason  is  obvious;  the  machinery  is  so 
violent  that  it  destroys  the  effect  it  is  intended  to  ex- 
cite. Had  the  story  been  kept  within  the  wtvaost  verge 
of  probability,  the  effect  had  been  preserved.  .  .  For 
instance,  we  can  conceive  and  allow  of  the  appearance 
of  a  ghost;  we  can  even  dispense  with  an  enchanted 
sword  and  helmet,  but  then  they  must  keep  within 
certain  limits  of  credibility.  A  sword  so  large  as  to 
require  a  hundred  men  to  lift  it,  a  helmet  that  by  its 
own  weight  forces  a  passage  through  a  court-yard  into 
an  arched  vault,  .  .  .  when  your  expectation  is 
wound  up  to  the  highest  pitch,  these  circumstances 
take  it  down  with  a  witness,  destroy  the  work  of  imagi- 
nation, and,  instead  of  attention,  excite  laughter.  .  . 
In  the  course  of  my  observations  upon  this  singular 
book,  it  seemed  to  me  that  it  was  possible  to  compose 
a  work  upon  the  same  plan,  wherein  these  defects 
might  be  avoided." 

Accordingly  Miss  Reeve  undertook  to  admit  only  a 

*  James  Beattie,   "  Dissertation  on  Fable  and  Romance."     "  Ar- 
genis,"  was  printed  in  1621. 


7be  Gothic  l^evival.  243 

rather  mild  dose  of  the  marvelous  in  her  romance. 
Like  Walpole  she  professed  to  be  simply  the  editor  of 
the  story,  which  she  said  that  she  had  transcribed  or 
translated  from  a  manuscript  in  the  Old  English  lan- 
guage, a  now  somewhat  threadbare  device.  The 
period  was  the  fifteenth  century,  in  the  reign  of  Henry 
VI.,  and  the  scene  England.  But,  in  spite  of  the 
implication  of  its  sub-title,  the  fiction  is  much  less 
*'  Gothic  "  than  its  model,  and  its  modernness  of  senti- 
ment and  manners  is  hardly  covered  with  even  the 
faintest  wash  of  mediaevalism.  As  in  Walpole's  book, 
there  are  a  murder  and  a  usurpation,  a  rightful  heir 
defrauded  of  his  inheritance  and  reared  as  a  peasant. 
There  are  a  haunted  chamber,  unearthly  midnight 
groans,  a  ghost  in  armor,  and  a  secret  closet  with  its 
skeleton.  The  tale  is  infinitely  tiresome,  and  is  full 
of  that  edifying  morality,  fine  sentiment  and  stilted 
dialogue — that  "old  perfumed,  powdered  D'Arblay 
conversation,"  as  Thackeray  called  it — which  abound 
in  "  Evelina,"  ''Thaddeus  of  Warsaw,"  and  almost  all 
the  fiction  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  last  century. 
Still  it  was  a  little  unkind  in  Walpole  to  pronounce  his 
disciple's  performance  tedious  and  insipid,  as  he  did. 

This  same  lady  published,  in  1785,  a  work  in  two 
volumes  entitled  "The  Progress  of  Romance,"  a  sort 
of  symposium  on  the  history  of  fiction  in  a  series  of 
evening  conversations.  Her  purpose  was  to  claim  for 
the  prose  romance  an  honorable  place  in  literature;  a 
place  beside  the  verse  epic.  She  discusses  the  defini- 
tions of  romance  given  in  the  current  dictionaries, 
such  as  Ainsworth's  and  Littleton's  Narratio  ficta — 
Scriptum  eroticum — Splendida  fabula;  and  Johnson's 
*' A  military  fable  of  the  Middle  Ages — A  tale  of  wild 


244  <^  History  of  English  ^Romanticism. 

adventures  of  war  and  love."  She  herself  defines  it 
as  **An  heroic  fable,"  or  "An  epic  in  prose."  She 
affirms  that  Homer  is  the  father  of  romance  and  thinks 
it  astonishing  that  men  of  sense  "should  despise  and 
ridicule  romances,  as  the  most  contemptible  of  all 
kinds  of  writing,  and  yet  expatiate  in  raptures  on  the 
beauties  of  the  fables  of  the  old  classic  poets — on 
stories  far  more  wild  and  extravagant  and  infinitely 
more  incredible."  After  reviewing  the  Greek 
romances,  like  Heliodorus'  "Theagenes  and  Chari- 
clea,"  she  passes  on  to  the  chivalry  tales  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  which,  she  maintains,  "were  by  no 
means  so  contemptible  as  they  have  been  represented 
by  later  writers."  Our  poetry,  she  thinks,  owes  more 
than  is  imagined  to  the  spirit  of  romance.  "  Chaucer 
and  all  our  old  writers  abound  with  it.  Spenser  owes 
perhaps  his  immortality  to  it;  it  is  the  Gothic  imagery 
that  gives  the  principal  graces  to  his  work  .  .  . 
Spenser  has  made  more  poets  than  any  other  writer  of 
our  country."  Milton,  too,  had  a  hankering  after 
the  romances;  and  Cervantes,  though  he  laughed 
Spain's  chivalry  away,  loved  the  thing  he  laughed  at 
and  preferred  his  serious  romance  "  Persiles  and 
Sigismonda  "  to  all  his  other  works. 

She  gives  a  list,  with  conjectural  dates,  of  many 
mediaeval  romances  in  French  and  English,  verse  and 
prose;  but  the  greater  part  of  the  book  is  occupied 
with  contemporary  fiction,  the  novels  of  Richardson, 
Fielding,  Smollett,  Crebillon,  Marivaux,  Rousseau, 
etc.  She  commends  Thomas  Leland's  historical 
romance  "Longsword,  Earl  of  Salisbury "  (1762),  as 
"a  romance  in  reality,  and  not  a  novel: — a  story  like 
those  of  the  Middle  Ages,  composed  of  chivalry,  love, 


The  Gothic  'T^evtval.  245 

and  religion."  To  her  second  volume  she  appended 
the  <*  History  of  Charoba,  Queen  of  Egypt,"  englished 
from  the  French  of  Vattier,  professor  of  Arabic  to 
Louis  XIV.,  who  had  translated  it  from  a  history  of 
ancient  Egypt  written  in  Arabic.  This  was  the  source 
of  Landor's  poem,  "Gebir."  When  Landor  was  in 
Wales  in  1797,  Rose  Aylmer — 

"  Rose  Aylmer,  whom  these  wakeful  eyes, 
May  weep  but  never  see  " — 

lent  him  a  copy  of  Miss  Reeve's  "Progress  of 
Romance,"  borrowed  from  a  circulating  library  at 
Swansea.  And  so  the  poor  forgotten  thing  retains  a 
vicarious  immortality,  as  the  prompter  of  some  of  the 
noblest  passages  in  modern  English  blank  verse  and  as 
associated  with  one  of  the  tenderest  passages  in  Lan- 
dor's life. 

Miss  Reeve  quotes  frequently  from  Percy's  "Essay 
on  the  Ancient  Minstrels,"  mentions  Ossian  and 
Chatterton  and  refers  to  Hurd,  Warton,  and  other 
authorities.  "  It  Avas  not  till  I  had  completed  my 
design,"  she  writes  in  her  preface,  "  that  I  read  either 
Dr.  Beattie's  '  Dissertation  on  Fable  and  Romance ' 
or  Mr.  Warton's  '  History  of  English  Poetry.'"  The 
former  of  these  was  an  essay  of  somewhat  more  than  a 
hundred  pages  by  the  author  of  "The  Minstrel."  It 
is  of  no  great  importance  and  follows  pretty  closely 
the  lines  of  Hurd's  "  Letters  on  Chivalry  and 
Romance,"  to  which  Beattie  repeatedly  refers  in  his 
footnotes.  The  author  pursues  the  beaten  track  in 
inquiries  of  the  kind:  discusses  the  character  of  the 
Gothic  tribes,  the  nature  of  the  feudal  system,  and  the 
institutionsof  chivalry  and  knight-errantry.     Romance, 


246  aA  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

it  seems,  was  "one  of  the  consequences  of  chivalry. 
The  first  writers  in  this  way  exhibited  a  species  of 
fable  different  from  all  that  had  hitherto  appeared. 
They  undertook  to  describe  the  adventures  of  those 
heroes  who  professed  knight-errantry.  The  world  was 
then  ignorant  and  credulous  and  passionately  fond  of 
wonderful  adventures  and  deeds  of  valor.  They 
believed  in  giants,  dwarfs,  dragons,  enchanted  castles, 
and  every  imaginable  species  of  necromancy.  These 
form  the  materials  of  the  old  romance.  The  knight- 
errant  was  described  as  courteous,  religious,  valiant, 
adventurous,  and  temperate.  Some  enchanters  be- 
friended and  others  opposed  him.  To  do  his  mis- 
tress honor,  and  to  prove  himself  worthy  of  her,  he 
was  made  to  encounter  the  warrior,  hew  down  the 
giant,  cut  the  dragon  in  pieces,  break  the  spell  of  the 
necromancer,  demolish  the  enchanted  castle,  fly 
through  the  air  on  wooden  or  winged  horses,  or,  with 
some  magician  for  his  guide,  to  descend  unhurt  through 
the  opening  earth  and  traverse  the  caves  in  the  bottom 
of  the  ocean.  He  detected  and  punished  the  false 
knight,  overthrew  or  converted  the  infidel,  restored 
the  exiled  monarch  to  his  dominions  and  the  captive 
damsel  to  her  parents;  he  fought  at  the  tournament, 
feasted  in  the  hall,  and  bore  a  part  in  the  warlike 
processions." 

There  is  nothing  very  startling  in  these  conclusions. 
Scholars  like  Percy,  Tyrwhitt,  and  Ritson,  who,  as 
collectors  and  editors,  rescued  the  fragments  of 
ancient  minstrelsy  and  gave  the  public  access  to  con- 
crete specimens  of  mediaeval  poetry,  performed  a  more 
useful  service  than  mild  clerical  essayists,  such  as 
Beattie   and    Hurd,    who   amused    their    leisure   with 


The  Gothic  Revival.  247 

general  speculations  about  the  origin  of  romance  and 
whether  it  came  in  the  first  instance  from  the  trouba- 
dours or  the  Saracens  or  the  Norsemen.  One  more 
passage,  however,  may  be  transcribed  from  Seattle's 
"Dissertation,"  because  it  seems  clearly  a  suggestion 
from  ''The  Castle  of  Otranto."  "The  castles  of  the 
greater  barons,  reared  in  a  rude  but  grand  style  of 
architecture,  full  of  dark  and  winding  passages,  of 
secret  apartments,  of  long  uninhabited  galleries,  and 
of  chambers  supposed  to  be  haunted  with  spirits,  and 
undermined  by  subterraneous  labyrinths  as  places  of 
retreat  in  extreme  danger;  the  howling  of  winds 
through  the  crevices  of  old  walls  and  other  dreary 
vacuities;  the  grating  of  heavy  doors  on  rusty  hinges 
of  iron;  the  shrieking  of  bats  and  the  screaming  of 
owls  and  other  creatures  that  resort  to  desolate  or 
half-inhabited  buildings;  these  and  the  like  circum- 
stances in  the  domestic  life  of  the  people  I  speak  of, 
would  multiply  their  superstitions  and  increase  their 
credulity;  and  among  warriors  who  set  all  danger  at 
defiance,  would  encourage  a  passion  for  wild  adven- 
ture and  difficult  enterprise." 

One  of  the  books  reviewed  by  Miss  Reeve  is  worth 
mentioning,  not  for  its  intrinsic  importance,  but  for 
its  early  date.  "  Longsword,  Earl  of  Salisbury,  An 
Historical  Romance,"  in  two  volumes,  and  published 
two  years  before  "The  Castle  of  Otranto,"  is  probably 
the  first  fiction  of  the  kind  in  English  literature.  Its 
author  was  Thomas  Leland,  an  Irish  historian  and 
doctor  of  divinity.*  "The  outlines  of  the  following 
story,"  begins  the  advertisement,    "and  some  of  the 

*"  The  Dictionary  of  National  Biography"  miscalls  it  "  Earl  of 
Canterbury"  and  attributes  it,  though  with  a  query,  io  John  Leland. 


248  <iA  History  of  English  l^omanticism. 

incidents  and  more  minute  circumstances,  are  to  be 
found  in  some  of  the  ancient  English  historians." 
The  period  of  the  action  is  the  reign  of  Henry  III. 
The  king  is  introduced  in  person,  and  when  we  hear 
him  swearing  "by  my  Halidome, "  we  rub  our  eyes  and 
ask,  "Can  this  be  Scott? "  But  we  are  soon  disabused, 
for  the  romance,  in  spite  of  the  words  of  the  advertise- 
ment, is  very  little  historical,  and  the  fashion  of  it  is 
thinly  wordy  and  sentimental.  The  hero  is  the  son 
of  Henry  II.  and  Fair  Rosamond,  but  his  speech  is 
Grandisonian.  The  adventures  are  of  the  usual  kind: 
the  dramatis  personce  include  gallant  knights  who  go 
a-tilting  with  their  ladies'  gloves  upon  their  casques, 
usurpers,  villains,  pirates,  a  wicked  monk  who  tries  to 
poison  the  hero,  an  oppressed  countess,  a  distressed 
damsel  disguised  as  a  page,  a  hermit  who  has  a  cave 
in  a  mountain  side,  etc.  The  Gothic  properties  are 
few;  though  the  frontispiece  to  the  first  volume 
represents  a  cowled  monk  raising  from  the  ground  the 
figure  of  a  swooning  knight  in  complete  armor,  in  front 
of  an  abbey  church  with  an  image  of  the  Virgin  and 
Child  sculptured  in  a  niche  above  the  door;  and  the 
building  is  thus  described  in  the  text:  "Its  windows 
crowded  with  the  foliage  of  their  ornaments,  and 
dimmed  by  the  hand  of  the  painter;  its  numerous 
spires  towering  above  the  roof,  and  the  Christian 
ensign  on  its  front,  declared  it  a  residence  of  devotion 
and  charity."  An  episode  in  the  story  narrates  the 
death  of  a  father  by  the  hand  of  his  son  in  the  Barons' 
War  of  Henry  III.  But  no  farther  advantage  is 
taken  of  the  historic  background  afforded  by  this  civil 
conflict,  nor  is  Simon  de  Montfort  so  much  as  named 
in  the  whole  course  of  the  book. 


The  Gothic  l^evival.  249 

Clara  Reeve  was  the  daughter  of  a  clergyman.  She 
lived  and  died  at  Ipswich  (i 725-1803).  Walter  Scott 
contributed  a  memoir  of  her  to  "Ballantyne's  Novelists' 
Library,"  in  which  he  defended  Walpole's  frank  use  of 
the  supernatural  against  her  criticisms,  quoted  above, 
and  gave  the  preference  to  Walpole's  method.*  She 
acknowledged  that  her  romance  was  a  "literary  de- 
scendant of  'Otranto';"  but  the  author  of  the  latter, 
evidently  nettled  by  her  strictures,  described  "The 
Old  English  Baron,"  as  "  Otranto  reduced  to  reason 
and  probability,"  and  declared  that  any  murder  trial 
at  the  Old  Bailey  would  have  made  a  more  interesting 
story.  Such  as  it  is,  it  bridges  the  interval  between 
its  model  and  the  novels  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  Lewis' 
"Monk"  (1795),  and  Maturin's  "Fatal  Revenge,  or 
the  Family  of  Montorio"  (1807).  f 

Anne  Radcliffe — born  Ward  in  1764,  the  year  of 
"Otranto" — was  the  wife  of  an  editor,  who  was 
necessarily  absent  from  home  much  of  the  time  until 
late  at  night.  A  large  part  of  her  writing  was  done 
to  amuse  her  loneliness  in  the  still  hours  of  even- 
ing; and  the  wildness  of  her  imagination,  and  the 
romantic  love  of  night  and  solitude  which  pervades 
her  books,  are  sometimes  accounted  for  in  this  way. 
In  1809  it  was  currently  reported  and  believed  that 
Mrs.  Radcliffe  was  dead.  Another  form  of  the  rumor 
was  that  she  had  been  made  insane  by  continually 
poring  over  visions  of  horror  and  mystery.     Neither 

*See  also,  for  a  notice  of  this  writer,  Julia  Kavanagh's  "  English 
"Women  of  Letters." 

f  Maturin's  "  Melmoth  the  Wanderer  "  (1820)  had  some  influence 
on  the  French  romantic  school  and  was  utilized,  in  some  particulars, 
by  Balzac. 


N 


250  iA  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

report  was  true;  she  lived  till  1823,  in  full  posses- 
sion of  her  faculties,  although  she  published  nothing 
after  1797.  The  circulation  of  such  stories  shows 
how  retired,  and  even  obscure,  a  life  this  very  popular 
writer  contrived  to  lead. 

It  would  be  tedious  to  give  here  an  analysis  of  these 
once  famous  fictions  seriatim.^  They  were  very  long, 
very  much  alike,  and  very  much  overloaded  with 
sentiment  and  description.  The  plots  were  compli- 
cated and  abounded  in  the  wildest  improbabilities  and 
in  those  incidents  which  were  once  the  commonplaces 
of  romantic  fiction  and  which  realism  has  now  turned 
out  of  doors:  '"concealments,  assassinations,  duels, 
disguises,  kidnapings,  escapes,  elopements,  intrigues, 
forged  documents,  discoveries  of  old  crimes,  and  identi- 
y  fications  of  lost  heirs.  The  characters,  too,  were  of 
the  conventional  kind.  There  were  dark-browed, 
crime-stained  villains — forerunners,  perhaps,  of  Man- 

^  \        fred  and   Lara,  for  the  critics  think  that   Mrs.  Rad- 

L  cliffe's  stories  were  not  without  important  influence 

I  on  Byron.^'    There   were  high-born,   penitent  dames 

■  who  retired  to  convents   in   expiation  of   sins  which 

are  not  explained  until  the  general  raveling  of  clews 

f        in  the  final    chapter.     There  were  bravoes,  banditti, 

/  feudal    tyrants,    monks,    inquisitors,    soubrettes,  and 

simple  domestics  a  la  Bianca,  in  Walpole's  romance. 
The  lover  was  of  the  type  adored  by  our  great-grand- 


/, 


*  Following  is  a  list  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  romances  :  "  The  Castles 
of  Athlin  and  Dunbayne  "  (1789)  ;  "Sicilian  Romance"  (1790); 
"Romance  of  the  Forest  "  (1791) ;  "  Mysteries  of  Udolpho  (1794)  ; 
"The  Italian"  (1797);  "Gaston  de  Blondville"  (1826).  Collec- 
tions of  her  poems  were  published  in  1816,  1834,  and  1845, 

f  See  "  Childe  Harold,"  canto  iv,  xviii. 


7he  Gothic  l^vival.  251 

I  \  mothers,  handsome,  melancholy,  passionate,  respect- 
ful but  desperate,  a  user  of  most  choice  English;  with 
large  black  eyes,  smooth  white  forehead,  and  jetty 
curls^  now  sunk,  Mr.  Perry  says,  to  the  covers  of 
prune  boxes.  The  heroine,  too,  was  sensitive  and 
melancholy.  When  alone  upon  the  seashore  or  in 
the  mountains,  at  sunset  or  twilight,  or  under  the 
midnight    moon,    or    when    the    wind  is  blowing,   she 

^  overflows  into  stanza  or  sonnetj'*To  Autumn,"  "To 
Sunset,"  "To  the  Bat,"  "  To  "She  Nightingale,"  "To 
the  Winds,"  "To  Melancholy,"  "  Song  of  the  Even- 
ing Hour."  We  have  heard  this  pensive  music  draw- 
ing near  in  the  strains  of  the  Miltonic  school,  but  in 
Mrs.  Radcliffe  the  romantic  gloom  is  profound  and  all- 
pervading.  In  what  pastures  she  had  fed  is  manifest 
from  the  verse  captions  that  head  her  chapters,  taken 
mainly  from  Blair,  Thomson,  Warton,  Gray,  Collins, 
Beattie,  Mason,  and  Walpole's  "Mysterious  Mother." 
Here  are  a  few  stanzas  from  her  ode  "To  Melancholy  " : 

'*^     -'  /^Spirit  of  love  and  sorrow,  hail! 

v..        Thy  solemn  voice  from  far  I  hear, 
Mingling  with  evening's  dying  gale: 
Hail,  with  thy  sadly  pleasing  tear!    ' 

"  O  at  this  still,  this  lonely  hour — 

Thine  own  sweet  hour  of  closing  day — 
Awake  thy  lute,  whose  charm ful  power 
Shall  call  up  fancy  to  obey : 

"  To  paint  the  wild,  romantic  dream 
That  meets  the  poet's  closing  eye, 
As  on  the  bank  of  shadowy  stream 
He  breathes  to  her  the  fervid  sigh. 


t<*> 


252  cA  History  of  English  l^maniicism. 

"  O  lonely  spirit,  let  thy  song 

Lead  me  through  all  thy  sacred  haunt, 
The  minster's  moonlight  aisles  along 
Where  spectres  raise  the  midnight  chant. 


/ 


In  Mrs.  Radcliffe's,  romances  we  find  a  tone  that   is 
absent  from  Walpole's:  romanticism  plus  sentimental- 
ism.     This  last  element  had  begun  to  infuse  itself  into 
general  literature  about  the  middle  of  the  century,  as  a 
protest  and  reaction  against  the  emotional  coldness  of 
1    the  classical  age.  -  It  announced  itself  in  Richardson, 
I    Rousseau,    and  the  youthful  Goethe;  in  the  comidie 
\larmoyante,  both  French  and  English ;  found  its  clever- 
Zest  expression    in  Sterne,  and  then,  becoming  a  uni- 
(  vefsaT  vogue,  deluged  fiction   with    productions    like 
I  Mackenzie's      "Man     of    Feeling,"    Miss.    Burney's 
j "  E.Keii^a,"  and  the  novels  of  Jane  Porter  and  Mrs. 
Opie.""  Thackeray  said  that  there  was  more  crying  in 
"Thaddeus  of  Warsaw"   than  in  any  novel  he  ever 
.  remembered  to  have  read.*  /  Emily,  in  the   "  Myster-  / 

ies  of  Udolpho  "  cannot  see  the  moon,  or  hear  a  guitar  > 
or  an    organ    or    the    murmur    of   the    pines,  without  \^J 
weeping.  \  Every  page   is  bedewed  with   the   tear   of   j 
sensibility;  the  whole  ^volume  is  damp  with   it,    and 
ever  and  anon   a  chorus  of  sobs  goes  up  from    the 
entire  company.     Mrs.  Radcliffe's  heroines  are  all  de-  ^■ 
scendants  of  Pamela  and  Clarissa  Harlowe,  but  under  , 
;  more  romantic  circumstances.    (JThey  are  beset  with  a  '    "Tt" 

/  thousand    difficulties;  carried  off  by  masked  ruffians,  \*~' 

/ 1  /^      immured  in  convents,   held  captive  in  robber  castles,    ' 
/    ^'    '    encompassed  with  horrors  natural  and  supernatural^ 

*"  Roundabout  Papers,"  "A  Peal  of  Bells."  "Monk"  Lewis 
wrote  at  sixteen  a  burlesque  novel,  "  Effusions  of  Sensibility,"  which 
remained  in  MS. 


The  Gothic  %evival.  253 

persecuted,  threatened  with  murder  and  with  rape. 
[^  But  though  perpetually  sighing,  blushing,  trembling, 
weeping,  fainting,  they  have  at  bottom  a  kind  of 
toughness  that  endures  through  allj)  They  rebuke  the 
wicked  in  stately  language,  full  of  noble  sentiments 
and  moral  truths.  They  preserve  the  most  delicate 
feelings  of  propriety  in  situations  the  most  discourag- 
ing. Emily,  imprisoned  in  the  gloomy  castle  of  Udol- 
pho,  in  the  power  of  ruffians  whose  brawls  and  orgies 
fill  night  and  day  with  horror,  in  hourly  fear  for  her 
virtue  and  her  life,  sends  for  the  lord  of  the  castle, — 
whom  she  believes  to  have  murdered  her  aunt, — and 
reminds  him  that,  as  her  protectress  is  now  dead,  it 
would  not  be  proper  for  her  to  stay  any  longer  under 
his  roof  thus  unchaperoned,  and  will  he  please,  there- 
fore, send  her  home? 

Mrs.  Radcliffe's  fictions  are  romantic,  but  not  usually 
medieval  in  subject.     In  the  "^Mysteries  of  Udolpho," 
the  period  of  the  action  is  the'"end  of  ITi'e  "sixle'enlh 
gentury ;    in  the    ''Romance™'oT^EF^'T'oresT,"'''™1^5T^^ 
in  "The    Italian,"   about    1760.     But  her    machinery 
is  prevailingly  Gothic  and  the  real  hero  of  the  story 
is  commonly,  as  in  Wa  1  p o  1  e/ 'S o me "Fau n teff^^^CurlQW     ' 
In  the   "  Mysteries  of  Udolpho  "  it  is  a  castle  inTfie  , 
Apennines;  in  the   "Romance  of  the  Forest,"  a  de-  • 
serted   abbey    in    the    depth   of  the  woods;  in   "The 
Italian,"  the   cloister  of   the    Black    Penitents.     'The  -^       ^C 
moldering    battlements,     the   worm-eaten   tapestries, 
the  turret  staircases,   secret  chambers,    underground 
passages,   lo*ng,  dark  corridors  where  the  wind  howls 
dismally,    and   distant  doijrs  which  slam  at  midnight 
rail  derive  from  '^^Qtranto. '^     So  do  the  supernatural 
fears   which    haunt   these   abodes   of   desolation;  the 


in—   '-^^ 


— — -L 


^ 


254  <v^  History  of  English  %omaniicism. 

strains  of  mysterious  music,  the  apparitions  which 
glide  through  the  shadowy  apartments,  the  hollow 
voices  that  warn  the  tyrant  to  beware.s  But  her 
niethod  here  is  quite  different  from  Walpole's;  she 
tacks  a  natural  explanation  to  every  unearthly  sight  or 
sound.  The  hollow  ^voice's  turn  out  tO  ftfi  Ventrilo- 
quism;  the  figure  of  a  putrefying  corpse  which  Emily 
sees  behind  the  black  curtain  in  the  ghost  chamber  at 
Udolpho  is  only  a  wax  figure/contrived  as  a  memenfo 
Mori  for  a  former  penltenir~]iltter  the  reader  has  once 
learned  this  trick  he  refuses  to  be  imposed  upon  again, 
and,  whenever  he  encounters  a  spirit,  feels  sure  that 
a  future  chapter  will  embody  it  back  into  flesh  and^ 
bkipd^...,. 

fThere  is  plenty  of  testimony  to  the  popularity  of 
these  romances.  Thackeray  says  that  a  lady  of  his 
acquaintance,  an  inveterate  novel  reader,  names  Val- 
ancourt  as  one  of  the  favorite  heroes  of  her  youth. 
"  *  Valancourt?  And  who  was  he?'  cry  the  young 
people.  Valancourt,  my  dears,  was  the  hero  of  one  of 
the  most  famous  romances  which  ever  was  published 
in  this  country.  The  beauty  and  elegance  of  Valan- 
court made  your  young  grandmammas'  gentle  hearts 
to  beat  with  respectful  sympathy.  He  and  his  glory 
have  passed  away.  .  .  Enquire  at  Mudie's  or  the 
London  Library,  who  asks  for  the  '  Mysteries  of 
Udolpho  '  now."  *     Hazlitt  said  that  he  owed  to  Mrs. 

*  "  O  Radcliffe,  thou  once  wert  the  charmer 
Of  girls  who  sat  reading  all  night  : 
Thy  heroes  were  striplings  in  armor, 
Thy  heroines,  damsels  in  white." 
-.-*         »  — Songs,  Ballads  and  other  Poems.    , 

i  By  Thos.  Haynes  Bayly,  London,  1857,  p.  141, 


/ 


The  Gothic  l^evival.  255 


Radcliffe  his  love  of  moonlight  nights,  autumn  leaves, 
and  decaying  ruins.  It  was,  indeed,  in  the  melo- 
dramatic manipulation  ""of  landscape  that  this  artist 
yas  most  original.  "The  scenes  that  savage~Tr6sa 
dashed  "  seem  to  have"  been  her  model,  and  critics  who 
were  fond  of  analogy  called  her  the  Salvator  Rosa  of 
fiction.  It  is  here  that  her  influence  on  Byron  and 
Chateaubriand  is  most  apparent.*  Mrs.  Radcliffe's 
scenery  is  not  quite  to  our  modern  taste,  any  more 
than  are  Salvator's  paintings.  Her  Venice  by  moon- 
light, her  mountain  gorges  with  their  black  pines  and 
foaming  torrents,  are  not  precisely  the  Venice  and  the 
Alps  of  Ruskin;  rather  of  the  operatic  stage.  Still 
they  are  impressive  in  their  way,  and  in  this  depart- 
ment she  possessed  genuine  poetic  feeling  and  a  real 
mastery  of  the  art  of  painting  in  distemper.  Witness 
the  picture  of  the  castle  of  Udolpho,  on  Emily's  first 
sight  of  it,  and  the  hardly  less  striking  description,  in 
the   "Romance  of  the   Forest,"  of  the  ruined  abbey 


r» 


vi 


A  novel  now  is  nothing  more 

Than  an  old  castle  and  a  creaking  door, 

A  distant  hovel, 
Clanking  of  chains,  a  gallery,  a  light, 
Old  armor  and  a  phantom  all  in  white. 

And  there's  a  novel." 

—George  Colman,  "  The  Will." 

*  Several  of  her  romances  were  dramatized  and  translated  into 
French.  It  is  curious,  by  the  way,  to  find  that  Goethe  was  not 
unaware  of  Walpole's  story.  See  his  quatrain  "  Die  Burg  von 
Otranto,"  first  printed  in  1837. 

"  Sind  die  Zimmer  sammtlich  besetzt  der  Burg  von  Otranto : 
Kommt,  voll  innigen  Grimiues,  der  erste  Riesenbesitzer 
Stiickweis  an,  und  verdrangt  die  neuen  falschen  Bewohner. 
Wehe  !  den  Fliehenden,  weh  !  den  Bleibenden  also  geschiet  es." 


256  ^  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

in   which    the  La  Motte    family   take   refuge:    "He 
approached  and  perceived  the  Gothic  remains  of  an 
abbey:  it  stood  on  a  kind  of  rude  lawn,  overshadowed 
by  high   and  spreading  trees,    which   seemed    coeval 
with   the    building,   and    diffused   a    romantic   gloom 
around.     The  greater  part  of  the  pile  appeared  to  be 
sinking  into  ruins,  and   that  which  had  withstood  the 
ravages  of  time  showed  the  remaining  features  of  the 
fabric  more  awful  in  decay.     The  lofty  battlements, 
thickly    enwreathed    with   ivy,  were   half   demolished 
and   become   the   residence   of  birds  of  prey.     Huge 
fragments   of   the   eastern    tower,  which   was   almost 
demolished,   lay  scattered  amid   the  high   grass,  that 
/       waved  slowly  in  the  breeze.      'The  thistle  shaqk  its 
/        lonely    head:    the    moss    whistled  to   the    wind.'.^    A 
^,  i         Gothic  gate,  richly  ornamented  with  fretwork,  which 
opened  into  the  main  body  of  the  edifice,  but  which 
was  now  obstructed  with  brushwood,  remained  entire. 
VAbove  the  vast  and  magnificent   portal  of  this   gate 
arose   a   window   of   the    same  order,  whose    pointed 
arches  still  exhibited  fragments  of  stained  glass,  once 
i  the  pride  of  monkish  devotion^)"  La  Motte,  thinking 

I  it  possible  it  might   yet    shelter  some  human   being, 

advanced  to  the  gate  and  lifted  a  massy  knocker. 
The  hollow  sounds  rung  through  the  emptiness  of  the 
place.  After  waiting  a  few  minutes,  he  forced  back 
the  gate,  which  was  heavy  with  iron-work,  and  creaked 
harshly  on  its  hinges.  .  .  From  this  chapel  he  passed 
into  the  nave  of  the  great  church,  of  which  one  window, 
more  perfect  than  the  rest,  opened  upon  a  long  vista 
of  the  forest,  through  which  was  seen  the  rich  color- 
ing of  evening,  melting  by  imperceptible  gradations 
into  the  solemn  gray  of  upper  air." 

*  Ossian. 


The  Gothic  Revival.  257 

Mrs.  Radcliffe  never  was  in  Italy  or  Switzerland  or 
the  south  of  France;  she  divined  the  scenery  of  her 
romances  from  pictures  and  descriptions  at  second 
hand.  But  she  accompanied  her  husband  in  excur- 
sions to  the  Lakes  and  other  parts  of  England,  and  in 
1794  made  the  tour  of  the  Rhine.*  The  passages  in 
her  diary,  recording  these  travels,  are  much  superior 
in  the  truthfulness  and  local  color  of  their  nature  | 
sketching  to  anything  in  her  novels.  Mrs.  Radcliffe 
is  furthermore  to  be  credited  with  a  certain  skill  in 
producing  terror,  by  the  use  of  that  favorite  weapon 
in  the  armory  of  the  romanticists,  mystery.  If  she 
did  not  invent  a  new  shudder,  as  Hugo  said  of  Baude- 
laire, she  gave  at  least  a  new  turn  to  the  old-fashioned  ? 
ghost  story.  She  creates  in  her  readers  a  feeling  of 
impending  danger,  suspense,  foreboding.  There  is  a 
sense  of  unearthly  presences  in  these  vast,  empty 
rooms;  the  silence  itself  is  ominous;  echoes  sound 
like  footfalls,  ghostly  shadows  lurk  in  dark  corners, 
whispers  come  from  behind  the  arras,  as  it  stirs  in  the 
gusts  of  wind.f  Tiie___heroine  is  afraid  to  look  in  the 
glass  lest  she  should  see  another  face  there^Deside  her 
own;  her  lamp  expires  and  leaves  her  in  the  dark  just 
as  she  is  coming  to  the  Qj-itical  point  in  the  manu- 
script which  she  has  found  in  an  old  chest,  etc.,  etc. 
But  the  tale  loses  its  impressiveness  as  soon  as  it 
strays  beyond    the    shade  of  the  battlements.      The 

*See  her  "Journey  through  Holland,"  etc.  (1795). 
\  Cf.    Keats,  "  The  Eve  of  Saint  Agnes  ": 

'w      \     "  The  arras  rich  with  hunt  and  horse  and  hound 
Fluttered  in  the  besieging  wind's  uproar, 
And  the  long  carpets  rose  along  the  gusty  floor." 


1 


258  c/^  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

Gothic   castle   or  priory   is  still,   as  in  Walpole,    the 
nucleus  of  the  story. 

Two  of  these  romances,  the  earliest  and  the  latest, 
though  they  are  the  weakest  of  the  series,  have  a  spe- 
cial interest  for  us  as  affording  points  of  comparison 
with  the  Waverley  novels.  "  The  Castles  of  Athlin  and 
Dunbayne"  is  the  narrative  of  a  feud  between  two 
Highland  clans,  and  its  scene  is  the  northeastern  coast 
of  Scotland,  "  in  the  most  romantic  part  of  the  High- 
lands," where  the  castle  of  Athlin — like  Uhland's 
"  Schloss  am  Meer  " — stood  "on  the  summit  of  a  rock 
whose  base  was  in  the  sea."  This  was  a  fine  place  for 
storms.  "  The  winds  burst  in  sudden  squalls  over  the 
deep  and  dashed  the  foaming  waves  against  the  rocks 
with  inconceivable  fury.  The  spray,  notwithstanding 
the  high  situation  of  the  castle,  flew  up  with  violence 
against  the  windows.  .  .  The  moon  shone  faintly  by 
intervals,  through  broken  clouds,  upon  the  waters, 
illumining  the  white  foam  which  burst  around.  .  . 
The  surges  broke  on  the  distant  shores  in  deep 
resounding  murmurs,  and  the  solemn  pauses  between 
the  stormy  gusts  filled  the  mind  with  enthusiastic 
awe."  Perhaps  the  description  slightly  reminds  of  the 
picture,  in  *'  Marmion,"  of  Tantallon  Castle,  the  hold 
of  the  Red  Douglases  on  the  German  Ocean,  a  little 
north  of  Berwick,  whose  frowning  towers  have  re- 
cently done  duty  again  in  Stevenson's  ''  David  Bal- 
four." The  period  of  the  action  is  but  vaguely 
indicated;  but,  as  the  weapons  used  in  the  attack  on 
the  castle  are  bows  and  arrows,  we  may  regard  the 
book  as  mediaeval  in  intention.  Scott  says  that  the 
scene  of  the  romance  was  Scotland  in  the  dark  ages, 
and  complains  that  the  author  evidently  knew  nothing 


The  Gothic  Revival.  259 

of  Scottish  life  or  scenery.  Tiiis  is  true;  her  castles 
might  have  stood  anywhere.  There  is  no  mention  of 
the  pipes  or  the  plaid.  Her  rival  chiefs  are  not  Gaelic 
caterans,  but  just  plain  feudal  lords.  Her  baron  of 
Dunbayne  is  like  any  other  baron;  or  rather,  he  is 
unlike  any  baron  that  ever  was  on  sea  or  land  or  any- 
where else  except  in  the  pages  of  a  Gothic  romance. 

*•  Gaston  de  Blondville  "  was  begun  in  1802  and  pub- 
lished posthumously  in  1826,  edited  by  Sergeant  Tal- 
fourd.  Its  inspiring  cause  was  a  visit  which  the 
author  made  in  the  autumn  of  1802  to  Warwick  Castle 
and  the  ruins  of  Kenilworth.  The  introduction  has 
the  usual  fiction  of  an  old  manuscript  found  in  an 
oaken  chest  dug  up  from  the  foundation  of  a  chapel 
of  Black  Canons  at  Kenilworth:  a  manuscript  richly 
illuminated  with  designs  at  the  head  of  each  chapter — 
which  are  all  duly  described — and  containing  a  "  trew 
chronique  of  what  passed  at  Killingworth,  in  Ardenn, 
when  our  Soveren  Lord  the  Kynge  kept  ther  his  Fest 
of  Seynt  Michel:  with  ye  marveylous  accident  that 
ther  befel  at  the  solempnissacion  of  the  marriage  of 
Gaston  de  Blondeville.  With  divers  things  curious  to 
be  known  thereunto  purtayning.  With  an  account  of 
the  grete  Turney  there  held  in  the  year  MCCLVI, 
Changed  out  of  the  Norman  tongue  by  Grymbald, 
Monk  of  Senct  Marie  Priori  in  Killijigworth."  Chat- 
terton's  forgeries  had  by  this  time  familiarized  the 
public  with  imitations  of  early  English.  The  finder 
of  this  manuscript  pretends  to  publish  a  modernized 
version  of  it,  while  endeavoring  "to  preserve  some- 
what of  the  air  of  the  old  style."  This  he  does  by 
a  poor  reproduction,  not  of  thirteenth-century,  but  of 
sixteenth-century  English,  consisting  chiefly  in  inver- 


26o  c/f  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

sions  of  phrase  and  the  occasional  use  of  a  cerfes  or 
naithless.  Two  words  in  particular  seem  to  have 
struck  Mrs.  Radcliffe  as  most  excellent  archaisms: 
ychon  and  his-self,  which  she  introduces  at  every  turn. 

"Gaston  de  Blondville,"  then,  is  a  tale  of  the  time 
of  Henry  III.  The  king  himself  is  a  leading  figure 
and  so  is  Prince  Edward.  Other  historical  personages 
are  brought  in,  such  as  Simon  de  Montfort  and  Marie 
de  France,  but  little  use  is  made  of  them.  The  book 
is  not  indeed,  in  any  sense,  an  historical  novel  like 
Scott's  "  Kenilworth,"  the  scene  of  which  is  the  same, 
and  which  was  published  in  182 1,  five  years  before 
Mrs.  Radcliffe's.  The  story  is  entirely  fictitious.  What 
differences  it  from  her  other  romances  is  the  con- 
scious attempt  to  portray  feudal  manners.  There  are 
elaborate  descriptions  of  costumes,  upholstery,  archi- 
tecture, heraldic  bearings,  ancient  military  array,  a 
tournament,  a  royal  hunt,  a  feast  in  the  great  hall  at 
Kenilworth,  a  visit  of  state  to  Warwick  Castle,  and 
the  session  of  a  baronial  court.  The  ceremony  of 
the  "  voide,"  when  the  king  took  his  spiced  cup,  is 
rehearsed  with  a  painful  accumulation  of  particulars. 
For  all  this  she  consulted  Leland's  "Collectanea," 
Warton's  "History  of  English  Poetry,"  the  "House- 
hold Book  of  Edward  IV.,"  Pegge's  "Dissertation  on 
the  Obsolete  Office  of  Esquire  of  the  King's  Body," 
the  publications  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries  and  simi- 
lar authorities,  with  results  that  are  infinitely  tedious. 
Walter  Scott's  archaeology  is  not  always  correct,  nor 
his  learning  always  lightly  borne;  but,  upon  the  whole, 
he  had  the  art  to  make  his  cumbrous  materials  con- 
tributory to  his  story  rather  than  obstructive  of  it. 

In  these  two  novels  we  meet  again  all  the  familiar 


The  Gothic  'Revival.  261 

apparatus  of  secret  trap-doors,  sliding  panels,  spiral 
staircases  in  the  thickness  of  the  walls,  subterranean 
vaults  conducting  to  a  neighboring  priory  or  a  cavern 
in  the  forest,  ranges  of  deserted  apartments  where  the 
moon  looks  in  through  mullioned  casements,  ruinous 
turrets  around  which  the  night  winds  moan  and 
howl.  Here,  too,  once  more  are  the  wicked  uncle  who 
seizes  upon  the  estates  of  his  deceased  brother's  wife, 
and  keeps  her  and  her  daughter  shut  up  in  his  dun- 
geon for  the  somewhat  long  period  of  eighteen  years; 
the  heroine  who  touches  her  lute  and  sings  in  pensive 
mood,  till  the  notes  steal  to  the  ear  of  the  young  earl 
imprisoned  in  the  adjacent  tower;  the  maiden  who  is 
carried  off  on  horseback  by  bandits,  till  her  shrieks 
bring  ready  aid;  the  peasant  lad  who  turns  out  to  be 
the  baron's  heir.  "His  surprise  was  great  when  the 
baroness,  reviving,  fixed  her  eyes  mournfully  upon 
him  and  asked  him  to  uncover  his  arm."  Alas!  the 
surprise  is  not  shared  by  the  reader,  when  "  '  It  is — it 
is  my  Philip!  '  said  she,  with  strong  emotion;  *  I  have 
indeed  found  my  long-lost  child:  that  strawberry,'  "* 
etc.,  etc.  "  Gaston  de  Blondville  "  has  a  ghost  which 
is  a  real  ghost — not  explained  away  in  the  end  accord- 
ing to  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  custom.  It  is  the  spirit  of 
Reginald  de  Folville,  Knight  Hospitaller  of  St.  John, 
murdered  in  the  Forest  of  Arden  by  Gaston  de  Blond- 
ville and  the  prior  of  St.  Mary's.  He  is  a  most 
robust  apparition,  and  is  by  no  means  content  with 
revisiting  the  glimpses  of  the  moon,  but  goes  in  and 
out  at  all  hours  of  the  day,  and  so  often  as  to  become 
somewhat  of  a  bore.  He  ultimately  destroys  both 
first  and  second  murderer:  one  in  his  cell,  the  other 
*  "  Castles  of  Athlin  and  Dunbayne." 


262  <v^  History  of  English  'T^manticism. 

in  open  tournament,  where  his  exploits  as  a  mysterious 
knight  in  black  armor  may  have  given  Scott  a  hint  for 
his  black  knight  at  the  lists  of  Ashby-de-la-Zouche  in 
"  Ivanhoe  "  {1819).  His  final  appearance  is  in  the 
chamber  of  the  king,  with  whom  he  holds  quite  a  long 
conversation.  "The  worm  is  my  sister,"  he  says: 
"the  mist  of  death  is  on  me.  My  bed  is  in  darkness. 
The  prisoner  is  innocent.  The  prior  of  St.  Mary's  is 
•  gone  to  his  account.  Be  warned."  It  is  not  explained 
why  Mrs.  Radcliffe  refrained  from  publishing  this  last 
romance  of  hers.  Perhaps  she  recognized  that  it  was 
belated  and  that  the  time  for  that  sort  of  thing  had 
gone  by.  By  1802  Lewis'  "Monk"  was  in  print,  as 
well  as  several  translations  from  German  romances; 
Scott's  early  ballads  were  out,  and  Coleridge's  "An- 
cient Mariner."  That  very  year  saw  the  publication 
of  the  "Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Border."  By  1826 
the  Waverley  novels  had  made  all  previous  fiction  of 
the  Gothic  type  hopelessly  obsolete.  In  1834  two  vol- 
umes of  her  poems  were  given  to  the  world,  including 
a  verse  romance  in  eight  cantos,  "  St.  Alban's  Abbey," 
and  the  verses  scattered  through  her  novels.  By  this 
time  Scott  and  Coleridge  were  dead;  Byron,  Shelley, 
and  Keats  had  been  dead  for  years,  and  Mrs.  Radcliffe's 
poesies  fell  upon  the  unheeding  ears  of  a  new  genera- 
tion. A  sneer  in  "Waverley"  (1814)  at  the  "Mys- 
teries of  Udolpho  "  had  hurt  her  feelings;  *  but  Scott 
made  amends  in  the  handsome  things  which  he  said 
of  her  in  his  "  Lives  of  the  Novelists."  It  is  interest- 
ing  to  note  that  when  the  "  Mysteries"  was  issued, 
the  venerable  Joseph  Warton  was  so  much  entranced 
that  he  sat  up  the  greater  part  of  the  night  to  finish  it. 
*See  Julia  Kavanagh's  "  English  Women  of  Letters." 


^  7 be  Gothic  T^evival.  263 

/''The  warfare  between  realism  and  romance,  which  ^ 
^went  on  in  the  days  of  Cervantes,  as  it  does  in  the  days  i 

[•^  of    Zola   and    Howell's,    had    its    skirmishes    also    in 
Mrs.   Radcliffe's    time.     Jane    Austen's    "  Northanger 
Abbey,"  written  in  1803  bat- published  only  in  1817,  is 
gently    satirical    of   Gothic   fiction?^    The    heroine    is   i   , 
devoted  to  the  "Mysteries  of  Uaolpho,"  which   she    j  i 

I     discusses   with    her   bosom    friend.      "While    I    have    Ij 
'  Udolpho '  to  read,  I  feel  as  if  nobody  could  make  me 
miserable.     O  the  dreadful  black  veil!     My  dear  Isa- 
bella, I  am  sure  there  must  be  Laurentina's  skeleton 
behind  it." 

"When  you  have  finished  '  Udolpho,'  "  replies  Isa- 
bella, "we  will  read  'The  Italian'  together;  and  I 
have  made  out  a  list  of  ten  or  twelve  more  of  the  same 
kind  for  you.  .  .  I  will  read  you  their  names  directly. 
Here  they  are  in  my  pocket-book.  '  Castle  of  Wolfen- 
bach,'  'Clermont,'  'Mysterious  Warnings,'  'Necro- 
mancer of  the  Black  Forest,'  'Midnight  Bell,' 
'  Orphan  of  the  Rhine,'  and  'Horrid  Mysteries.'  " 

When  introduced  to  her  frieed's  brother.  Miss  Mor- 
land  asks  him  at  once,  "Have  you  ever  read  'Udol- 
pho,' Mr.  Thorpe?"     But   Mr.  Thorpe,  who  is  not  a 
literary  man,   but   much    given   to   dogs  and    horses, 
assures  her  that  he  never  reads  novels;  they  are  "  full 
of  nonsense  and  stuff;  there  has  not  been  a  tolerably 
decent  one  come  out  since  '  Tom  Jones,'  except  the 
''Monk.'"      The    scenery   about   Bath    reminds    Miss 
Morland  of  the  south   of   France   and   "the  countryv 
that   Emily  and   her   father   traveled   through   in   the 
'Mysteries   of  Udolpho.'"     She  is  enchanted  at  the       "^    / 
prospect  of  a  drive  to  Blaize  Castle,  where  she  hopes    ' 
to  have  "  the  happiness  of  being  stopped  in  their  way 


I 

I 

I 


264  tt/f  History  of  English  Romanticism. 


along  narrow,  winding  vaults  by  a  low,  grated  door; 
I  or   even   of    having   their    lamp — their    only   lamp — 

*'  extinguished  by  a  sudden  gust  of  wind  and  of  being 

f  left  in  total  darkness."     She  visits  her  friends,  the  Til- 

{  neys,  at   their   country   seat,    Northanger   Abbey,   in 

Gloucestershire;  and,  on  the  way  thither,  young  Mr. 
Tilney  teases  her  with  a  fancy  sketch  of  the  Gothic 
horrors  which  she   will   unearth   there:    the   ''sliding 
panels  and  tapestry";  the  remote  and  gloomy  guest- 
chamber,  which  will  be  assigned  her,  with  its  ponder- 
ous chest,  and  its  portrait  of  a  knight  in  armor:  the 
secret  door,  with  massy  bars  and  padlocks,   that  she 
will   discover  behind   the  arras,   leading  to  a  "small 
vaulted  room,"  and  eventually  to  a    "subterraneous 
communication  between  your  apartment  and  the  chapel 
of  St.  Anthony  scarcely  two  miles  off."     Arrived  at 
the  abbey,  she  is  disappointed  at  the  modern  appear- 
ance  of   her   room,    but    contrives    to   find   a   secret 
drawer  in  an  ancient  ebony  cabinet,  and  in  this  a  roll 
of   yellow    manuscript   which,    on    being   deciphered, 
proves   to  be  a  washing  bill.     She  is  convinced,   not- 
withstanding, that  a    mysterious  door  at    the    end  of 
a   certain    gallery   conducts    to    a   series    of    isolated 
chambers  where  General  Tilney,  who  is  supposed  to  be 
a  widower,  is  keeping  his  unhappy  wife  immured  and 
fed  on  bread  and  water.     When  she  finally  gains  admis- 
sion to  this  Bluebeard's  chamber  and  finds  it  nothing 
but  a  suite  of  modern  rooms,  "  the  visions  of  romance 
were  over.    .    .   Charming  as  were  all  Mrs.  Radcliffe's 
works,  and  charming  even  as  were  the  works  of  all  her 
imitators,   it  was  not  in  them,   perhaps,   that  human 
nature,  at  least  in  the  midland  counties  of  England, 
was  to  be  looked  for." 


CHAPTER   VIII. 
ipercB  anO  tbe  JBaUa&s. 

The  regeneration  of  English  poetic  style  at  the  close 
of  the  last  century  came  from  an  unexpected  quarter. 
What  scholars  and  professional  men  of  letters  had' 
sought  to  do  by  their  imitations  of  Spenser  and  Mil- 
ton, and  their  domestication  of  the  Gothic  and  the 
Celtic  muse,  was  much  more  effectually  done  by  Percy 
and  the  ballad  collectors.  What  they  had  sought  to 
do  was  to  recall  British  poetry  to  the  walks  of  imagi- 
nation and  to  older  and  better  models  than  Dryden  and 
Pope.  But  they  could  not  jump  off  their  own  shad- 
ows: the  eighteenth  century  was  too  much  for  them. 
While  they  anxiously  cultivated  wildness  and  simplic- 
ity, their  diction  remained  polished,  literary,  academic 
to  a  degree.  It  is  not,  indeed,  until  we  reach  the 
boundaries  of  a  new  century  that  we  encounter  a 
Gulf  Stream  of  emotional,  creative  impulse  strong 
enough  and  hot  enough  to  thaw  the  classical  icebergs 
till  not  a  floating  spiculum  of  them  is  left. 

Meanwhile,  however,  there  occurred  a  revivifying 
contact  with  one  department,  at  least,  of  early  verse 
literature,  which  did  much  to  clear  the  way  for  Scott 
an(i_Coleridge  and  Keats^  The~decade  from  1760  to 
1770  Js  important  in  the  history  of  English  romanti'-' 
cism,  and  its  most  important  title  is  Thomas  Percy's 

Reliques  of  Ancient  English  Poetry:  Consisting  of 

265 


4< 


266  d/^  History  of  English  T^omanticism. 

Old  Heroic  Ballads,  Songs,  and  Other  Pieces  of  our 
Earlier  Poets,"  published  in  three  volumes  in  1765. 
It  made  ajessj_mmediate  and  exciting  impressioi^  upon 
contemporary  Europe  than  MacPherson's  *.' PoeRis,  of 
Ossian,"  but  it  was  more  fruitful  in  enduring  results. 
The  Germans  make  a  convenient  classification  of 
poetry  into  Kunstpoesie  and  Volkspoesie,  terms  which 
may  be  imperfectly  translated  as  literary  poetry  and 
popular  poetry.  The  English  Kunstpoesie  of  the 
Middle  Ages  lay  buried  under  many  superincumbent 
layers  of  literary  fashion.  Oblivion  had  overtaken 
Gower  and  Occleve,  and  Lydgate  and  Stephen  H^wes,^ 
and  Skelton,  and  Henryson  and  James  I.  of  Scotland,  and 
well-nigh  Chaucer  himself — all  the  mediaeval  poetry  of 
the  schools,  in  short.  But  it  was  known  to  the  curious 
that  there  was  still  extant  a  large  body  of  popular 
poetry  in  the  shape  of  narrative  ballads,  which  had 
been  handed  down  chiefly  by  oral  transmission,  and 
still  lived  in  the  memories  and  upon  the  lips  of  the 
common  people.  Many  of  these  went  back  in  their 
original  shapes  to  the  Middle  Ages,  or  to  an  even 
remoter  antiquity,  and  belonged  to  that  great  store  of 
folk-lore  which  was  the  common  inheritance  of  the 
Aryan  race.  Analogues  and  variants  of  favorite  Eng- 
\  lish  and  Scottish  ballads  have  been  traced  through 
Valmost  all  the  tongues  of  modern  Europe.  Danish 
literature  is  especially  rich  in  ballads  and  affords 
valuable  illustrations  of  our  native  ministrelsy.*  It 
was,  perhaps,  due  in  part  to  the  Danish  settlements  in 
-N-orthumbria  and  to  the  large  Scandinavian  admixture 
in   the    Northumbrian   blood    and   dialect,    that   "the 

*Svend  Grundtvig's  great  collection,  "  Danmarks    Gamle  Folke- 
viser,"  was  published  in  five  volumes  in  1853-90. 


Tercy  and  the  'Ballads.  267 

north  countrie  "  became  par  excellence  the  ballad  land: 
Lowland  Scotland— particularly  the  Lothians — and  the 
English  bordering  counties,  Northumberland,  West- 
moreland, and  Cumberland;  with  Yorkshire  and  Not- 
tinghamshire, in  which  were  Barndale  and  Sherwood 
Forests,  Robin  Hood's  haunts.  It  is  not  possible  to 
assign  exact  dates  to  these  songs.  They  were  seldom 
redliced  to  writing  till  many  years  after  they  were 
composed.  In  the  Middle  Ages  they  were  sung  to 
the  harp  by  wandering  minstrels.  In  later  times  they 
were  chanted  or  recited  by  ballad-singers  at  fairs, 
markets,  ale-houses,  street-corners,  sometimes  to  the 
accompaniment  of  a  fiddle  or  crowd.  They  were 
learned  by  ancient  dames,  who  repeated  them  in 
chimney  corners  to  children  and  grandchildren.  In 
this  way  some  of  them  were  preserved  in  an  unwrit- 
ten state,  even  to  the  present  day,  in  the  tenacious 
memory  of  the  people,  always  at  bottom  conservative 
and,  under  a  hundred  changes  of  fashion  in  the  literary 
poetry  which  passes  over  their  heads,  clinging  obsti- 
nately to  old  songs  and  beliefs  learned  in  childhood, 
and  handing  them  on  to  posterity.  Walter  Scott  got 
much  of  the  material  for  his  *'  Ministrelsy  of  the  Bor- 
der" from  the  oral  recitation  of  pipers,  shepherds,  and 
old  women  in  Ettrick  Forest.  Professor  Child's — the 
latest  and  fullest  ballad  collection — contains  pieces 
never  before  given  in  print  or  manuscript,  some  of 
them  obtained  in  America!  * 

Leading  this  subterranean  existence,   and  generally 
thought  unwpjthy  the  notice  of  educated  people,  they 

*  Francis  James  Child's  "  English  and  Scottish  Popular  Ballads," 
issued  in  ten  parts  in  1882-98  is  one  of  the  glories  of  American 
scholarship. 


268  (v^  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

naturally  underwent  repeated  changes;  so  that  we 
have  numerous  versions  of  the  same  story,  and  inci- 
dents, descriptions,  and  entire  stanzas  are  borrowed 
and  lent  freely  among  the  different  ballads.  The  cir- 
cumstance, e.  g.,  of  the  birk  and  the  briar  springing 
from  the  graves  of  true  lovers  and  intertwisting  their 
branches  occurs  in  the  ballads  of  "  Fair  Margaret  and 
Sweet  William,"  "Lord  Thomas  and  Fair  Annet," 
**Lord  Lovel,"  "Fair  Janet,"  and  many  others.  The 
knight  who  was  carried  to  fairyland  through  an  en- 
trance in  a  green  hillside,  and  abode  seven  years  with 
the  queen  of  fairy,  recurs  in  "  Tam  Lin,"  "Thomas 
;Rymer,"  *  etc.  Like  all  folk-songs,  these  ballads  are 
I  anonymous  and  may  be  regarded  not  as  the  composi- 
I  tion  of  any  one  poet,  but  as  the  property,  and  in  a 
Isense  the  work,  of  the  people  as  a  whole.  Coming 
out  of  an  uncertain  past,  based  on  some  dark  legend 
of  heart-break  or  blood-shed,  they  bear  no  author's 
name,  but  are  fer(B  naturcB  and  have  the  flavor  of  wild 
game.  They  were  common  stock,  like  the  national 
speech;  everyone  could  contribute  toward  them:  gen- 
erations of  nameless  poets,  minstrels,  ballad-singers 
modernized  their  language  to  suit  new  times,  al- 
tered their  dialect  to  suit  new  places,  accommodated 
their  details  to  different  audiences,  English  or  Scotch, 
and  in  every  way  that  they  thought  fit  added,  re- 
trenched, corrupted,  improved,  and  passed  them  on. 

Folk-poetry    is_  conyentionaj;    it   seems    to   be   the 
production  of  a  guild,  and  to  have  certain  well  under- 
stood and  commonly  expected  tricks  of  style  and  verse. 
^Freshness  and  sincerity  are  almost  always  attributes 
of  the  poetry  of  heroic  ages,  but  individuality  belongs 

*  Cf.   The  Tannhauser  legend  and  the  Venusberg. 


T^ercy  and  the  'Ballads.  269 

to  a  high  civilization  and  an  advanced  literary  cul- 
ture. Whether  the  "  Iliad  "  and  the  "Odyssey"  are 
the  work  of  one  poet  or  of  a  cycle  of  poets,  doubtless 
the  rhetorical  peculiarities  of  the  Homeric  epics,  such 
as  the  recurrent  phrase  and  the  conventional  epithet 
(the  rosy-fingered  dawn,  the  well-greaved  Greeks,  the 
swift-footed  Achilles,  the  much-enduring  Odysseus, 
etc.)  are  due  to  this  communal  or  associative  charac- 
ter of  ancient  heroic  song.  As  in  the  companies  of 
architects  who  built  the  mediaeval  cathedrals,  or  in 
the  schools  of  early  Italian  painters,  masters  and  dis- 
ciples, the  manner  of  the  individual  artist  was  subdued 
to  the  tradition  of  his  craft. 

The  English  and  Scottish  popular  ballads  are  in 
various  simple  stanza  forms,  the  commonest  of  all 
being  the  old  septenarius  or  **  fourteener,"  arranged 
in  a  four-lined  stanza  of  alternate  eights  and  sixes, 
thus: 

"  Up  then  crew  the  red,  red  cock, 
And  up  and  crew  the  gray; 
The  eldest  to  the  youngest  said 
'  'Tis  time  we  were  away.'  "  * 

This  is  the  stanza  usually  employed  by  modern  ballad 
imitators,  like  Coleridge  in  "The  Ancient  Mariner," 
~Sc"ott  in  "Jock  o'  Hazeldean,"  Longfellow  in  "The 
Wreck  of  the  Hesperus,"  Macaulay  in  the  "Lays  of 
Ancient  Rome,"  Aytoun  in  the  "  Lays  of  the  Scottish  / 
Cavaliers."  Many  of  the  stylistic  and  metrical  peculiar-  | 
ities  of  the  ballads  arose  from  the  fact  that  they  were 
made  to  be  sung  or  recited  from  memory.  Such  are 
perhaps  the  division  of  the  longer  ones  into  fits,  to  rest 
the  voice  of  the  singer;  and  the  use  of  the  burden  or 
*  "  The  Wife  of  Usher's  Well." 


2  70  ^  History  of  English  'T^omanticism. 

refrain  for  the  same  purpose,  as  also  to  give  the  listen- 
ers and  bystanders  a  chance  to  take  up  the  chorus, 
which  they  probably  accompanied  with  a  few  dancing 
steps.*  Sometimes  the  burden  has  no  meaning  in 
itself  and  serves  only  to  mark  time  with  a  Jley  derry 
down  or  an  O  lilly  lally  and  the  like.  Sometimes  it  has 
more  or  less  reference  to  the  story,  as  in  "  The  Two 
Sisters": 

"  He  has  ta'en  three  locks  o'  her  yellow  hair — 
Binnorie,  O  Binnorie — 
And  wi'  them  strung  his  harp  sae  rare — 
By  the  bonnie  mill-dams  of  Binnorie." 

Again  it  has  no  discoverable  relation  to  the  context,  as 
in  "  Riddles  Wisely  Expounded  " — 

"  There  was  a  knicht  riding  frae  the  east — 
Jennifer  gentle  and  rosemarie — 
Who  had  been  wooing  at  monie  a  place — 
As  the  dew  flies  over  the  mulberry  tree" 

\        Both  kinds  of  refrain  have  been  liberally  employed  by 
/      modern  balladists.     Thus  Tennyson  in  "The  Sisters": 


\ 


"  We  were  two  sisters  of  one  race, 
\  The  wind  is  howling  in  turret  and  tree; 

She  was  the  fairer  in  the  face, 
0  the  earl  was  fair  to  see." 

/\While   Rossetti    and   Jean   Ingelow  and  others    have 
V_rather  favored  the  inconsequential  burden,  an  affecta- 
tion travestied  by  the  late  Mr.  C.  S.  Calverley: 

*  It  should  never  be  forgotten  that  the  ballad  (derived  from  ballare 
— to  dance)  was  originally  not  a  written  poem,  butja-.song  aud.dance. 
Many  of  the  old  tunes  are  preserved.     A  number  are  given  in  Chap^" 
pell's  "  Popular  Music  of  the  Olden  Time,"  and  in  the  appendix  to 
Motherwell's  "  Minstrelsy,  Ancient  and  Modern  "  (1827). 


Tercy  and  the  'Ballads.  271 

"  The  auld  wife  sat  at  her  ivied  door, 

(Butter  and  eggs  and  a  pound  of  cheese) 
A  thing  she  had  frequently  done  before; 

And  her  spectacles  lay  on  her  aproned  knees. 

"  The  farmer's  daughter  hath  soft  brown  hair 
(Butter  and  eggs  and  a  pound  of  cheese), 
And  I  met  with  a  ballad,  I  can't  say  where. 
Which  wholly  consisted  of  lines  like  these."* 

A  musical  or  mnemonic  device  akin  to  the  refrain  was 
that  sing-song  species  of  repetend  so  familiar  in  bal- 
lad language : 

"  She  had  na  pu'd  a  double  rose, 
A  rose  but  only  twa." 

"  They  had  na  sailed  a  league,  a  league, 
A  league  but  barely  three." 

"  How  will  I  come  up  ?     How  can  I  come  up  ? 
How  can  I  come  to  thee  ?  " 

An  answer  is  usually  returned  in  the  identical  words 
of  the  question;  and  as  in  Homer,  a  formula  of  narra- 
tion or  a  commonplace  of  description  does  duty  again 
and  again.  Iteration  in  the  ballads  is  not  merely  for 
economy,  but  stands  in  lieu  of  the^metaghor  and  other 
figures  of  literary  poetry: 

"  '  O  Marie,  put  on  your  robes  o'  black, 
Or  else  your  robes  o'  brown, 
For  ye  maun  gang  wi'  me  the  night. 
To  see  fair  Edinbro  town.' 

'  I  winna  put  on  my  robes  o'  black, 

Nor  yet  my  robes  o'  brown; 
But  I'll  put  on  my  robes  o'  white, 

To  shine  through  Edinbro  town.'  " 

*  "  A  Ballad."     One  theory  explains  these  meaningless  refrains  as 
remembered  fragments  of  older  ballads. 


272  (sA  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

Another  mark  of  the  genuine  ballad  manner,as  of  Homer 
and  Volkspoesie  in  general,  is  the  conventional  epithet. 
Macaulay  noted  that  the  gold  is  always  red  in  the  bal- 
lads, the  ladies  always  gay,  and  Robin  Hood's  men  are 
always  his  merry  men.  Doughty  Douglas,  bold  Robin 
Hood,  merry  Carlisle,  the  good  greenwood,  the  gray 
goose  wing,  and  the  wan  water  are  other  inseparables 
of  the  kind.  Still  another  mark  is  the  frequent  reten- 
tion of  the  Middle  English  accent  on  the  final  syllable 
in  words  like  contrie,  baron,  dinere,  felawe,  abbay, 
rivere,  money,  and  its  assumption  by  words  which 
never  properly  had  it,  such  as  lady,  harper,  wedding, 
wat^r,  etc.*  Indeed,  as  Percy  pointed  out  in  his  intro- 
duction, there  were  "many  phrases  and  idioms  which 
the  minstrels  seem  to  have  appropriated  to  them- 
selves, .  .  a  cast  of  style  and  measure  very  different 
from  that  of  contemporary  poets  of  a  higher  class." 

Not  everything  that  is  called  a  ballad  belongs  to 
the  class  of  poetry  that  we  are  here  considering.  In 
its  looser  employment  the  word  has  signified  almost 
any  kind  of  song:  "  a  woeful  ballad  made  to  his  mis- 
tress' eyebrow,"  for  example.  "Ballade"  was  also 
the  name  of  a  somewhat  intricate  French  stanza  form, 
employed  by  Gower  and  Chaucer,  and  recently  reintro- 
duced into  English  verse  by  Dobson,  Lang,  Gosse,  and 
others,  along  with  the  virelay,  rondeau,  triolet,  etc. 
There  is  also  a  numerous  class  of  popular  ballads — in 

*  Reproduced  by  Rossetti  and  other  moderns.  See  them  parodied 
in  Robert  Buchanan's  "  Fleshly  School  of  Poets  "  : 

"  When  seas  do  roar  and  skies  do  pour, 
Hard  is  the  lot  of  the  sailor 
Who  scarcely,  as  he  reels,  can  tell 
The  sidelights  from  the  binnacle." 


Tercy  and  the  ballads.  273 

the  sense  of  something  made  for  the  people,  though 
not  by  the  people — which  are  without  relation  to  our 
subject.  These  are  the  street  ballads,  which  were 
and  still  are  hawked  about  by  ballad-mongers,  and 
which  have  no  literary  character  whatever.  There 
are  satirical  and  political  ballads,  ballads  versifying 
passages  in  Scripture  or  chronicle,  ballads  relating  to 
current  events,  or  giving  the  history  of  famous  mur- 
ders and  other  crimes,  of  prodigies,  providences,  and 
all  sorts  of  happenings  that  teach  a  lesson  in  morals: 
about  George  Barnwell  and  the  "Babes  in  the  Wood," 
and  "Whittington  and  his  Cat,"  etc.:  ballads  like 
Shenstone's  "Jemmy  Dawson"  and  Gay's  "Black- 
eyed  Susan."  Thousands  of  such  are  included  in 
manuscript  collections  like  the  "  Pepysian,"  or  printed 
in  the  publications  of  the  Roxburghe  Club  and  the 
Ballad  Society.  But  whether  entirely  modern,  or 
extant  in  black-letter  broadsides,  they  are  nothing  to] 
our  purpose.  We  have  to  do  here  with  the  folk-song, 
the  traditional  ballad,  product  of  the  people  at  a  time 
when  the  people  was  homogeneous  and  the  separation 
between  the  lettered  and  unlettered  classes  had  not  J 
yet  taken  place:  the  true  minstrel  ballad  of  the  Middle/ 
Ages,  or  of  that  state  of  society  which  in  rude  and 
primitive  neighborhoods,  like  the  Scottish  border, 
prolonged  mediaeval  conditions  beyond  the  strictly^ 
mediaeval  period. 

In  the  form  in  which  they  are  preserved,  few  of  our 
ballads  are  older  than  the  seventeenth  or  the  latter 
part  of  the  sixteenth  century,  though  in  their  origin 
many  of  them  are  much  older.  Manuscript  versions 
of  "Robin  Hood  and  the  Monk"  and  "Robin  Hood 
and  the  Potter"  exist,  which  are  referred  to  the  last 


274  e^  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

years  of  the  fifteenth  century.  The  "  Lytel  Geste  of 
Robyn  Hode  "  was  printed  by  Wynkyn  de  Worde  in 
1489.  The  "  Not-Brown  Maid  "  was  printed  in 
"  Arnold's  Chronicle  "  in  1502.  "  The  Hunting  of  the 
Cheviot" — the  elder  version  of  "  Chevy  Chase  " — was 
mentioned  by  Philip  Sidney  in  his  "  Defence  of  Poe- 
sie"  in  1580.*  The  ballad  is  a  narrative  song,  naive, 
impersonal,  spontaneous,  objective.  The  singer  is 
lost  in  the  song,  the  teller  in  the  tale.  That  is  its 
essence,  but  sometimes  the  story  is  told  by  the  lyrical, 
sometimes  by  the  dramatic  method.  In  "  Helen  of 
Kirkconnell "  it  is  the  bereaved  lover  who  is  himself 
the  speaker:  in  "  Waly  Waly,"  the  forsaken  maid. 
These  are  monologues;  for  a  purely  dialogue  ballad  it 
will  be  sufficient  to  mention  the  powerful  and  impress- 
ive piece  in  the  "  Reliques  "  entitled  "  Edward."  Her- 
-  der  translated  this  into  German;  it  is  very  old,  with 
Danish,  Swedish,  and  Finnish  analogues.  It  is  a  story 
of  parricide,  and  is  narrated  in  a  series  of  questions 
by  the  mother  and  answers  by  the  son.  The  com- 
monest form,  however,  was  a  mixture  of  epic  and 
dramatic,  or  direct  relation  with  dialogue.  A  frequent 
feature  is  the  abruptness  of  the  opening  and  the  tran- 
sitions. The  ballad-maker  observes  unconsciously 
Aristotle's  rule  for  the  epic  poet,  to  begin  in  viedias 
res.  Johnson  noticed  this  in  the  instance  of  "Johnny 
Armstrong,"  but  a  stronger  example  is  found  in  "  The 
Banks  of  Yarrow : " 


*  "I  never  heard  the  old  song  of  Percie  and  Douglas  that  I  found  not 
my  heart  moved  more  than  with  a  trumpet;  and  yet  it  is  sung  but  by 
some  blind  crouder,  with  no  rougher  voice  than  rude  style;  which 
being  so  evil  apparelled  in  the  dust  and  cobwebs  of  that  uncivil  age, 
what  would  it  work,  trimmed  in  the  gorgeous  eloquence  of  Pindar'." 


Tercy  and  the  ballads.  275 

"  Late  at  e'en,  drinking  the  wine, 
And  ere  they  paid  the  lawing, 
They  set  a  combat  them  between, 
To  fight  it  in  the  dawing." 

With  this,  an  indirect,  allusive  way  of  telling  the  story, 
which  Goethe  mentions  in  his  prefatory  note  to  "  Des 
Sangers  Fluch,"' as  a  constant  note  of  the  *' Volkslied," 
The  old  ballad-maker  does  not  vouchsafe  explanations 
about  persons  and  motives;  often  he  gives  the  history, 
not  expressly  nor  fully,  but_byjhints_and  glimpses, 
leaving  the  rest  tp.conjecture;  throwing  up  its  salient 
points  into  a  strong,  lurid  light  against  a  background 
of  shadows.  The  knight  rides  out  a-hunting,  and 
b^fliriH  by  his  riderless  horse  comes  home,  and  that 
is  all : 

"  Toom*  hame  cam  the  saddle 
But  never  cam  he.  " 

Or  the  knight  himself  comes  home  and  lies  down  to 
die,  reluctantly  confessing,  under  his  mother's  ques- 
tioning, that  he  dined  with  his  true-love  and  is 
poisoned,  f     And  again  that  is  all.     Or 

"  — In  behint  yon  auld  fail  X  dyke, 
I  wot  there  lies  a  new-slain  knight ; 
And  naebody  kens  that  he  lies  there. 
But  his  hawk,  his  hound,  and  lady  fair. 

"  His  hound  is  to  the  hunting  gane. 
His  hawk  to  fetch  the  wild-fowl  hame, 
His  lady's  ta'en  another  mate. 
So  we  may  mak  our  dinner  sweet." 

A  whole  unuttered  tragedy  of  love,  treachery,  and 
murder  lies   back  of  these  stanzas.     This  method  of 

*Empty  :  "  Bonnie  George  Campbell."  f  "  Lord  Randall." 

iTurf  :   "The  Twa  Corbies." 


276  <iA  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

narration  may  be  partly  accounted  for  by  the  fact 
that  the  story  treated  was  commonly  some  local 
country-side  legend  of  family  feud  or  unhappy 
passion,  whose  incidents  were"famlliar  to  the  ballad- 
singer's  audience  and  were  readily  supplied  by 
memory.  One  theory  holds  that  the  story  was  partly 
told  and  partly  sung,  and  that  the  links  and  exposi- 
tions were  given  in  prose.  However  this  may  be,  the 
artless  art  of  these  popular  poets  evidently  included 
a  knowledge  of  the  uses  of  mystery  and  suggestion. 
They  knew  that,  for  the  imagination,  the  part  is  some- 
times greater  than  the  whole.  Gray  wrote  to  Mason  in 
i757>  "  I  have  got  the  old  Scotch  ballad  [Gil  Maurice] 
on  which  '  Douglas  '  [Home's  tragedy,  first  played  at 
Edinburgh  in  1756]  was  founded.  It  is  divine.  .  . 
Aristotle's  best  rules  are  observed  in  it  in  a  manner 
^  I  which  shews  the  author  never  had  heard  of  Aristotle. 
It  begins  in  the  fifth  act  of  the  play.  You  may  read 
it  two-thirds  through  without  guessing  what  it  is 
about;  and  yet,  when  you  come  to  the  end,  it  is  im- 
possible not  to  understand  the  whole  story." 

It   is  not  possible  to  recover  the  conditions  under 
which  these    folk-songs  "made   themselves,"*   as    it 
^^  were,  or  grew  under  the  shaping  hands  of  generations 

of  nameless   bards.      Their    naive,   primitive   quality. 

cannot   be  acquired:  the  secret  is  lost.     But  Walter 

.3 

1^1,3  *  I  use  this  phrase  without  any  polemic  purpose.     The  question  of 

-'  origins  is  not  here  under  discussion.     Of  course  at  some  stage  in  the 

history  of  any  ballad  the  poet,  the  individual  artist,  is  present, 
though  the  precise  ratio  of  his  agency  to  the  communal  element  in 
the  work  is  obscure.  For  an  acute  and  learned  review  of  this  topic, 
see  the  Introduction  to  "  Old  English  Ballads,"  by  Professor  Francis 
B.  Gummere  (Athenreum  Press  Series),  Boston,  1894. 


\ 


I^ercy  and  the  'Ballads.  277 

Scott,  who  was  steeped  to  the  lips  in  balladry,  and 
whose  temper  had  much  of  the  healthy  objectivity 
of  an  earlier  age,  has  succeeded  as  well  as  any 
modern.  Some  of  his  ballads  are  more  perfect 
artistically  than  his  long  metrical  romances;  those  of 
them  especially  which  are  built  up  from  a  burden  or 
fragment  of  old  minstrel  song,  like  ''  Jock  o'  Hazel- 
dean  "  *  and  the  song  in  "  Rokeby  " : 

"  He  turned  his  charger  as  he  spake 
Upon  tlie  river  shore, 
He  gave  the  bridle-reins  a  shake, 
Said  '  Adieu  for  evermore. 
My  love  ! 
And  adieu  for  evermore.'  " 

Here  Scott  catches  the  very  air  of  popular  poetry, 
and  the  dovetailing  is  done  with  most  happy  skill. 
"  Proud  Maisie  is  in  the  Wood  "  is  a  fine  example  of 
the  ballad  manner  of  story-telling  by  implication,  f 

As  regards  their  subject-matter,  the  ballads  admit 
of  a  rough  classification  into  the  historical,  or  quasi- 
historical,  and  the  purely  legendary  or  romantic. 
Of  the  former  class  were  the  -'^riding-ballad"  of  the 
Scottish    border,  where  the  forays  of  moss-troopers, 

♦From  "Jock  o'  Hazel  Green."  "  Young  Lochinvar  "  is  derived 
from  "  Katherine  Janfarie"  in  the  "Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish 
Border." 

\  "  Scott  has  given  us  nothing  more  complete  and  lovely  than  this 
little  song,  which  unites  simplicity  and  dramatic  power  to  a  wildwood 
music  of  the  rarest  quality.  No  moral  is  drawn,  far  less  any  con- 
scious analysis  of  feeling  attempted  :  the  pathetic  meaning  is  left  to 
be  suggested  by  the  mere  presentment  of  the  situation.  Inexperi- 
enced critics  have  often  named  this,  which  may  be  called  the 
Homeric  manner,  superficial  from  its  apparent  simple  facility." — 
Palgrave  ;  "  Golden  T^ViZ^wr^  "  (Edition  of  1866),  p.  392. 


s/ 


278  a/^  History  of  English  lipmanticistn. 

the  lifting  of  blackmail,  the  raids  and  private  warfare 
of  the  Lords  of  the  Marches,  supplied  many  traditions 
of  heroism  and  adventure  like  those  recorded  in  "  The 
Battle  of  Otterburn,"  "The  Hunting  of  the  Cheviot," 
'•Johnnie  Armstrong,"  "  Kinmont  Willie,"  "The 
Rising  in  the  North "  and  "  Northumberland  Be- 
trayed by  Douglas."  Of  the  fictitious  class,  some 
were  shortened,  popularized,,  and  generally  degraded 
versions  of  the  chivalry  romances,  which  were  jSasslhg 
out  of  favor  among  educated  readers  in  the  sixteenth 
century  and  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  ballad-makers. 
Such,  to  name  only  a  few  included  in  the  "  Reliques," 
were  "Sir  Lancelot  du  Lake,"  "The  Legend  of  Sir 
Guy,"  "  King  Arthur's  Death  "  and  "  The  Marriage  of 
Sir  Gawaine."  But  the  substance  of  these  was  not  of 
the  genuine  popular  stuff,  and  their  personages  were 
simply  the  old  heroes  of  court  poetry  in  reduced  cir- 
cumstances. Much  more  impressive  are  the  original 
folk-songs,  which  strike  their  roots  deep  into  the 
ancient  world  of  legend  and  even  of  myth. 

In  this  true  ballad  world  there  is  a  strange  com- 
mingling of  paganism  and  Catholic  Christianity.  It 
abounds  in  the  supernatural  and  the  marvelous. 
Robin  Hood  is  a  pious  outlaw.  He  robs  the  fat- 
headed  monks,  but  will  not  die  unhouseled  and  has 
great  devotion  to  Our  Blessed  Lady;  who  appears 
also  to  Brown  Robyn,  when  he  is  cast  overboard, 
hears  his  confession  and  takes  his  soul  to  Heaven.* 
When  mass  has  been  sung  and  the  bells  of  merry 
Lincoln  have  rung,  Lady  Maisry  goes  seeking  her 
little  Hugh,  who  has  been  killed  by  the  Jew's  daughter 

*  "  Brown  Robyn's  Confession."     Robin  Hood  risks  his  life  to  take 
the  sacrament.     "  Robin  Hood  and  the  Monk." 


Tercy  and  the 'Ballads.  279 

and  thrown  into  Our  Lady's  draw-well  fifty  fathom 
deep,  and  the  boy  answers  his  mother  miraculously 
from  the  well.*  Birds  carry  messages  for  lovers  f  and 
dying  men,!  or  show  the  place  where  the  body  lies 
buried  and  the  corpse-candles  shine.§  The  harper 
strings  his  harp  with  three  golden  hairs  of  the 
drowned  maiden,  and  the  tune  that  he  plays  upon 
them  reveals  the  secret  of  her  death.  ||  The  ghosts 
of  the  sons  that  have  perished  at  sea  come  home  to 
take  farewell  of  their  mother.^  The  spirit  of  the  for- 
saken maid  visits  her  false  lover  at  midnight  ;**  or  "  the 
dead  comes  for  the  quick, "ff  as  in  Burger's  weird  poem. 
There  are  witches,  fairies,  and  mermaidens  JJ  in  the 
ballads:  omens,  dreams,  spells,§§  enchantments,  trans- 
formations, |||1  magic  rings  and  charms,  "gramarye"^^ 
of  many  sorts;  and  all  these  things  are  more  effective'*' 
here  than  in  poets  like  Spenser  and  Collins,  be- 
cause they  are  matters  of  belief  and  not  of  make-j 
believe. 

The  ballads  are^reyailingly,.:tragical  in  theme,  and 
the  tragic  passions  of  pity  and  fear  fimi  an  elementary 
force  of  utterance.     Love  is  strong  as  death,  jealousy 

*  "  Sir  Hugh."     Cf.  Chaucer's  "  Prioresse  Tale." 
f  "  The  Gay  Goshawk." 
X  "  Johnnie  Cock." 
§  "  Young  Hunting." 

II  "  The  Twa  Sisters." 

•[[  "  The  Wife  of  Usher's  Well." 

**  "  Fair  Margaret  and  Sweet  William." 

ff  "  Sweet  William's  Ghost." 

ii"  Clerk  Colven." 

§§  "  Willie's  Lady." 

III  "Kemp  Owyne  "  and  "  Tam  Lin." 
11  "King  Estmere." 


28o  e//  History  of  English  l^manticism. 

cruel  as  the  grave.  Hate,  shame,  grief,  despair  speak 
here  with  their  native  accent: 

"  There  are  seven  forsters  at  Pickeram  Side, 
At  Pickeram  where  they  dwell, 
And  for  a  drop  of  thy  heart's  bluid 
They  wad  ride  the  fords  of  hell."  * 

"  O  little  did  my  mother  think, 
The  day  she  cradled  me, 
What  lands  I  was  to  travel  through, 
What  death  I  was  to  dee."  f 

The  maiden  asks  her  buried  lover: 

"Is  there  any  room  at  your  head,  Sanders? 
Is  there  any  room  at  your  feet? 
Or  any  room  at  your  twa  sides, 

Where  fain,  fain  would  I  sleep?  "  X 

"  O  waly,  waly,  but  love  be  bonny 
A  little  time  while  it  is  new;  § 
But  when  'tis  auld  it  waxeth  cauld 

And  fades  awa'  like  morning  dew.    .    . 

"  And  O!  if  my  young  babe  were  born, 
And  set  upon  the  nurse's  knee, 
And  I  mysel'  were  dead  and  gane, 

And  the  green  grass  growing  over  mel  " 

Manners  in  this  world  are  of  a  primitive  savagery. 
There  are  treachery,  violence,  cruelty,  revenge;  but 
there  are  also  honor,  courage,  fidelity,  and  devotion 

*  "  Johnnie  Cock." 

f  "Mary  Hamilton." 

i  "  Sweet  William's  Ghost." 

§"The  Forsaken   Bride."     C/.  Chaucer: 

"  Love  is  noght  old  as  whan  that  it  is  newe." 

—  Gierke s   Tale. 


T^ercy  and  the  'Ballads.  281 

that    endureth   to    the    end.      "Child    Waters"   and 
"Fair   Annie"  do  not  suffer    on  a  comparison   with 
Tennyson's  "Enid"  and  Chaucer's   story  of   patient 
Griselda  ("  The  Clerkes  Tale  ")  with  which  they  have 
a   common    theme.     It  is  the   mediaeval  world.     Ma- 
rauders, pilgrims,  and  wandering  gleemen  go  about  in 
It.     The  knight   stands  at  his  garden  pale,   the  lady 
"sits  at  her  bower  window,  and  the  little  foot  page  car- 
ries  messages  over  moss  and  moor.     Marchmen  are  ; 
"riding  through  the  Bateable  Land  "by  the  hie  light  o'  ^ 
the  moon."     Monks  are  chanting  in  St.  Mary's  Kirk,  | 
"trumpets   are  blowing   in   Carlisle    town,  castles   are 
burning;   down  in  the  glen  there  is  an  ambush   and 
swords  are  flashing;  bows  are  twanging  in  the  green- 
wood; four  and  twenty  ladies  are  playing  at  the  ball, 
and    four   and    twenty   milk-white    calves   are  in  the 
woods  of  Glentanner — all  ready  to  be  stolen.     About 
Yule  the  round  tables  begin;  the  queen  looks  over  the  | 
castle-wall,  the  palmer  returns  from  the  Holy  Land, 
Young  Waters  lies  deep  in  Stirling  dungeon,  but  Child; 
Maurice   is   in    the   silver  wood,   combing  his  yellow 
locks  with  a  silver  comb. 

There  is  an  almost  epic  coherence  about  the  ballads 
of  the  Robin  Hood  cycle.  This  good  robber,  who 
with  his  merry  men  haunted  the  forests  of  Sherwood 
and  Barnsdale,  was  the  real  ballad  hero  and  the  dar- 
ling of  the  popular  fancy  which  created  him.  For 
though  the  names  of  his  confessor,  Friar  Tuck;  his 
mistress.  Maid  Marian;  and  his  companions,  Little 
John,  Scathelock,  and  Much  the  miller's  son,  have  an 
air  of  reality, — and  though  the  tradition  has  associated 
itself  with  definite  localities, — there  is  nothing  histori- 
cal about  Robin  Hood.     Langland,  in  the  fourteenth 


ySS^ 


282  t/^  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

century,  mentions  "rhymes  of  Robin  Hood";  and 
efforts  have  been  made  to  identify  him  with  one  of 
the  dispossessed  followers  of  Simon  de  Montfort,  in 
•<the  Barons'  War,"  or  with  some  still  earlier  free- 
booter, of  Hereward's  time,  who  had  taken  to  the 
woods  and  lived  by  plundering  the  Normans.  Myth 
as  he  is,  he  is  a  thoroughly  national  conception.  He 
had  the  English  love  of  fair  play;  the  English  readi- 
ness to  shake  hands  and  make  up  when  worsted  in  a 
square  fight.  He  killed  the  King's  venison,  but  was  a 
loyal  subject.  He  took  from  the  rich  and  gave  to  the 
poor,  executing  thus  a  kind  of  wild  justice.  He  defied 
legal  authority  in  the  person  of  the  proud  sheriff  of 
Nottingham,  thereby  appealing  to  that  secret  sym- 
pathy with  lawlessness  which  marks  a  vigorous,  free 
yeomanry.*  He  had  the  knightly  virtues  of  courtesy 
and  hospitality,  and  the  yeomanly  virtues  of  good 
temper  and  friendliness.  And  finally,  he  was  a  mighty 
archer  with  the  national  weapons,  the  long-bow  and 
the  cloth-yard  shaft;  and  so  appealed  to  the  national 
love  of  sport  in  his  free  and  careless  life  under  the 
greenwood  tree.  The  forest  scenery  gives  a  poetic 
background  to  his  exploits,  and  though  the  ballads, 
like  folk-poetry  in  general,  seldom  linger  over  natural 
description,  there  is  everywhere  a  consciousness  of 
this  background  and  a  wholesome,  outdoor  feeling: 

"  In  somer,  when  the  shawes  be  sheyne, 
And  laves  be  large  and  long, 
Hit  is  full  mery  in  feyre  foreste 
To  here  the  foulys  song: 

*  What  character  so  popular  as  a  wild  prince — like  Prince  Hal — 
who  breaks  his  own  laws,  and  the  heads  of  his  own  people,  in  a  demo- 
cratic way  ? 


T'ercy  and  the  'Ballads.  283 

"  To  se  the  dere  draw  to  the  dale, 
And  leva  the  hillis  hee, 
And  shadow  hem  in  the  leves  grene, 
Under  the  grene-wode  tre."  * 

Although  a  few   favorite    ballads  such  as   "  Johnniel 
Armstrong,"  "Chevy  Chase,"  "The  Children  in  th^ 
Wood,"  and  some  of  the  Robin  Hood  ones  had  lond; 
been  widely,  nay  almost  universally  familiar,  they  had 
hardly  been  regarded  as  literature  worthy  of  seriousl 
attention.     They  were  looked  upon  as  nursery  tales,  ' 
or  at  best  as  the  amusement  of  peasants  and  unlettered 
folk,  who  used  to  paste  them  up  on  the  walls  of  inns, 
cottages,  and  ale-houses.     Here  and  there  an  educated 
man   had  had  a  sneaking  fondness  for  collecting  old 
ballads — much   as    people    nowadays   collect   postage 
stamps.     Samu£l„££|)y'%  the  diarist,  made  such  a  collec- 
tion, and  so  did  John  Selden,  the  great  legal  antiquary 
and  scholar  of  Milton's  time.      "I  have  heard,"  wrote 
Addison,    "  that  the  late  Lord    Dorset,  who  had  the 
greatest  wit  tempered  with  the  greatest  candor,  and 
was  one  of  the  finest  critics  as  well  as  the  best  poets' 
of  his  age,  had  a  numerous  collection  of  old  English 
ballads,  and  a   particular  pleasure  in  the  reading  of 
them.      I    can    affirm    the    same    of    Mr.     Dryden." 
Dryden's   "Miscellany   Poems"   (1684)  gave"" Gircfe- 
roy,"  "  Johnnie  Armstrong,"    "  Chevy  Chase,"   "The 
Miller  and  the  King's  Daughter,"  and  "Little   Mus- 
grave  and   the  Lady  Barnard."     The  last  named,  as 
well  as  "Lady  Anne  Bothwell's  Lament"  and  "Fair 
Margaret  and  Sweet  William,"  f  was  quoted  in  Beau- 

*  "  Robin  Hood  and  the  Monk." 

f  For  a  complete  exposure  of  David  Mallet's  impudent  claim  to 
the  authorship  of  this  ballad,  see  Appendix  II.  to  Professor  Phelps' 
"  English  Romantic  Movement."  * 


284  <iA  History  of  English  'T{omanticism. 

mont_and  Fletcher's  "Knight  of  the  Burning  Pestle," 
(161 1 ).  Scraps  of  them  are  sung  by  one  of  the  dramatis 
^ersoncB,  old  Merrythought,  v/hose  specialty  is  a 
damnable  iteration  of  ballad  fragments.  References 
to  old  ballads  are  numerous  in  the  Elizahetban.  j)lays. 
Percy  devoted  the  second  -book- Q^^  his  .first. 5£xi£S_^^ 
*' Ballads  that.  Illustrate  Shakspere."  In  the  seven- 
teenth  century  a  few  ballads  were  printed  entire  in 
poetic  miscellanies  entitled  "Garlands,"  higgledy- 
piggledy  with  pieces  of  all  kinds.  Professor  Child 
enumerates  nine  ballad  cpllectiojis-,  before  Percy's. 
The  only  ones  of  any  importance  among  these  were 
"A  Collection  of  Old  Ballads  "  (Vols.  I.  and  II.  in  1723, 
Vol.  III.  in  1725),  ascribed  to  Agibrose  Philips;  and  the 
Scotch  poet,  Allan  jRamsaj's,  "Tea  Table  Miscellany," 
(in  4  vols.,  1714-40)  and  "  Evergreen  "  (2  vols.,  1724). 
The  first  of  these  collections  was  illustrated  with 
copperplate  engravings  and  supplied  with  introduc- 
tions which  were  humorous  in  intention.  The  editor 
treated  his  ballads  as  trifles,  though  he  described  them 
as  "corrected  from  the  best  and  most  ancient  copies 
extant";  and  said  that  Homer  himself  was  nothing 
more  than  a  blind  ballad-singer,  whose  songs  had 
been  subsequently  joined  together  and  formed  into 
an  epic  poem.  Ramsay's  ballads  were  taken  in  part 
from  a  manuscript  collection  of  some  eight  hundred 
pages,  made  by  George  Bannatyne  about  1570  and  still 
preserved  in  the  Advocates'  Library  at  Edinburgh. 

In  Nos.  70,  74,  and  85,  of  the  Spectator,  Addison  had 
praised   the  naturalness  and  simplicity  of  the   popu- 
lar   ballads,    selecting   for    special    mention    * '  Chevy 
Chase  " — the  later  version — "which,"  he  wrote,  "  is  the 
Tavorite  ballad  of  the  common  people  of  England;  and 


'Percy  and  the  'Ballads.  285 

Ben  Jonson  used  to  say  he  had  rather  have  been  the 
author  of  it  than  of  all  his  works";  and  "the  'Xw^ 
Children  in  the  Wood,'  which  is  one  of  the  darling 
songs  of  the  common  people,  and  has  been  the  delight 
of  most  Englishmen  in  some  part  of  their  age." 
Addison  justifies  his  liking  for  these  humble  poems 
by  classical  precedents.  "The  greatest  modern  critics 
have~Taid  it  down  as  a  rule  that  an  heroic  poem  should 
be  founded  upon  some  important  precept  of  morality 
adapted  to  the  constitution  of  the  country  in  which 
the  poet  writes.  Homer  and  Virgil  have  formed  their 
plans  in  this  view."  Accordingly  he  thinks  that  the 
author  of  "Chevy  Chase"  meant  to  point  a  moral  as 
to  the  mischiefs  of  private  war.  As  if  it  were  not 
precisely  the  gaudj^au,  certaininu  that  inspired  the  old 
border  ballad-maker!  As  if  he  did  not  glory  in  the 
fight!  The  passage  where  Earl  Percy  took  the  dead 
Douglas  by  the  hand  and  lamented  his  fallen  foe 
reminds  Addison  of  Eneas'  behavior  toward  Lausus. 
The  robin  red-breast  covering  the  children  with  leaves 
recalls  to  his  mind  a  similar  touch  in  one  of  Horace's 
odes.  But  it  was  much  that  Addison,  whose  own 
verse  was  so  artificial,  should  have  had  a  taste  for  the 
wild  graces  of  folk-song.  He  was  severely  ridiculed 
by  his  contemporaries  for  these  concessions.  "He 
descended  now  and  then  to  lower  disquisitions,"  wrote 
Dr.  Johnson,  "  and  by  a  serious  display  of  the  beauties 
of  'Chevy  Chase,'  exposed  himself  to  the  ridicule  of 
Wagstaff,  who  bestowed  a  like  pompous  character  on 
'Tom  Thumb';  and  to  the  contempt  of  Dennis, 
who,  considering  the  fundamental  position  of  his 
criticism,  that  'Chevy  Chase'  pleases  and  ought  to 
please  because  it  is  natural,  observes  that  '  there  is  a 


286  c//  History  of  English  1{omanticism. 

way  of  deviating  from  nature  ...  by  imbecility, 
which  degrades  nature  by  faintness  and  diminu- 
tion' ...  In  'Chevy  Chase'  .  .  .  there  is  a  chill 
and  lifeless  imbecility.  The  story  cannot  possibly  be 
told  in  a  manner  that  shall  make  less  impression  on 
the  mind."  * 

Nicholas  Rowe,  the  dramatist  and  Shakspere  editor, 
had  said  a  good  word  for  ballads  in  the  prologue  to 
**  Jane  Shore  "  (1713) : 

"  Let  no  nice  taste  despise  the  hapless  dame 
Because  recording  ballads  chant  her  name. 
Those  venerable  ancient  song  enditers 
Soared  many  a  pitch  above  our  modern  writers.    .    . 
^^"'  Our  numbers  may  be  more  refined  than  those, 

But  what  we've  gained  in  verse,  we've  lost  in  prose. 
Their  words  no  shuffling  double  meaning  knew  : 
Their  speech  was  homely,  but  their  hearts  were  true.    .    , 
With  rough,  majestic  force  they  moved  the  heart, 
And  strength  and  nature  made  amends  for  art." 

J      Ballad  forgery  had  begun  early.     To  say  nothing  of 

/  appropriations,  like  Mallet's,  of    "William  and    Mar- 

1    garet,"   Lady  Wardlaw  put  forth  her  "Hardyknut" 

in  17 19  as  a  genuine  old  ballad,  and  it  was  reprinted 

as  such  in  Ramsay's    "Evergreen."     Gray  wrote  to 

Walpole  in  1760,  "I    have  been  often  told   that  the 

poem  called   '  Hardicanute '  (which  I  always  admired 

and  still  admire)  was  the  work  of  somebody  that  lived 

a  few  years  ago.     This  I  do  not  at  all  believe,  though 

'N     it   has   evidently   been   retouched    by   some   modern 

"^\      hand."      Before    Percy   no    concerted    or   intelligent 

effort  had  been  made  toward  collecting,   preserving, 

and  editing  the  corpics poetarum  of  English  minstrelsy. 

*"Life  of  Addison." 


Tercy  and  the  'Ballads.  287 

The  great  mass  of  ancient  ballads,  so  far  as  they  were 
in  print  at  all,  existed  in  ''stall  copies,"  /.  e.,  single 
sheets  or  broadsides,  struck  off  for  sale  by  ballad- 
mongers  and  the  keepers  of  book-stalls. 

Thomas  Percy,  the  compiler  of  the  "  Reliques,"  was 
a  parish  clergyman,  settled  at  the  retired  hamlet  of 
Easton  Maudit,  Northamptonshire.  For  years  he  had 
amused  his  leisure  by  collecting  ballads.  He  num- 
bered among  his  acquaintances  men  of  letters  like 
Johnson,  Goldsmith,  Garrick,  Grainger,  Farmer,  and 
Shensto,ne.  Jt  was  the  last  who  suggested  the  plan  of 
the  "Reliques"  and  who  was  to  have  helped  in  its 
"e3cecution,  had  not  his  illness  and  death  prevented. 
Johnson  spent  a  part  of  the  summer  of  1764  on  a  visit 
toTTTe  vicarage  of  Easton  Maudit,  on  which  occasion 
Percy  reports  that  his  guest  "chose  for  his  regular 
reading  the  old  Spanish  romance  of  *  Felixmarte  of 
Hircania,'  in  folio,  which  he  read  quite  through."  He 
adds,  what  one  would  not  readily  suspect,  that  the 
doctor,  when  a  boy,  "was  immoderately  fond  of  read- 
ing romances  of  chivalry,  and  he  retained  his  fondness 
for  them  through  life.  .  .  I  have  heard  him  attribute 
to  these  extravagant  fictions  that  unsettled  turn  of 
mind  which  prevented  his  ever  fixing  in  any  profes- 
sion." Percy  talked  over  his  project  with  Johnson, 
wtuD^would  seem  to  have  given  his  approval,  and  even 
to  have  added  his  persuasions  to  Shenstone's.  For  in 
the  preface  to  the  first  edition  of  the  "  Reliques,"  the 
editor  declared  that  "  he  could  refuse  nothing  to  such 
judges  as  the  author  of  the  Rambler  and  the  late 
Mr.  Shenstone";  and  that  "  to  the  friendship  of  Mr. 
Johnson  he  owes  many  valuable  hints  for  the  conduct 
of  his  work."     And  after  Ritson  had  questioned  the 


K" 


288  cyf  History  of  English  T^pmanticism. 

existence  of  the  famous  "folio  manuscript,"  Percy's 
nephew  in  the  advertisement  to  the  fourth  edition 
(1794),  cited  "the  appeal  publicly  made  to  Dr.  John- 
son ...  so  long  since  as  in  the  year  1765,  and  never 
once  contradicted  by  him." 

In  spite  of  these  amenities,  the  doctor  had  a  low 
opinion  of  ballads  and  ballad  collectors.  In  the 
Rambler  (No.  177)  he  made  merry  over  one  Can- 
tilenus,  who  "turned  all  his  thoughts  upon  old  bal- 
lads, for  he  considered  them  as  the  genuine  records  of 
the  natural  taste.  He  offered  to  show  me  a  copy  of 
'The  Children  in  the  Wood,'  which  he  firmly  believed 
to  be  of  the  first  edition,  and  by  the  help  of  which  the 
text  might  be  freed  from  several  corruptions,  if  this 
age  of  barbarity  had  any  claim  to  such  favors  from 
him."  "The  conversation,"  says  Boswell,  "having 
turned  on  modern  imitations  of  ancient  ballads,  and 
someone  having  praised  their  simplicity,  he  treated 
them  with  that  ridicule  which  he  always  displayed 
when  that  subject  was  mentioned."  Johnson  wrote 
several  stanzas  in  parody  of  the  ballads;  e.  g., 

"  The  tender  infant,  meek  and  mild, 
Fell  down  upon  a  stone: 
The  nurse  took  up  the  squealing  child, 
But  still  the  child  squealed  on." 
And  again: 

J.  "I  put  my  hat  upon  my  head 

S  And  walked  into  the  Strand; 

And  there  I  met  another  man 


Whose  hat  was  in  his  hand. 


This  is  quoted  by  Wordsworth,*  who  compares  it  with 
'=>*.  a  stanza  from  "  The  Children  in  the  Wood  ": 

*  Preface  to  second  edition  of  the  "  Lyrical  Ballads." 


Tercy  and  the  'ballads.  289 

"  Those  pretty  babes,  with  hand  in  hand. 
Went  wandering  up  and  down; 
But  never  more  they  saw  the  man 
Approaching  from  the  town." 

He  says  that  in  both  of  these  stanzas  the  lan- 
guage is  that  of  familiar  conversation,  yet  one  stanza 
is  admirable  and  the  other  contemptible,  because  the  . 
matter  of  it  is  contemptible.  In  the  essay  supple-  ! 
mentary  to  his  preface,  Wordsworth  asserts  that  the 
"Reliques  "  was  '*  ill  suited  to  the  then  existing  taste  | 
of  Titjr  society,  and  Dr.  Johnson  ,  .  .  was  not  sparing 
in  his  exertions  to  make  it  an  object  of  contempt"; 
and  that  "Dr.  Percy  was  so  abashed  by  the  ridicule 
flung  upon  his  labors  .  .  .  that,  though  while  he  was 
writing  under  a  mask  he  had  not  wanted  resolution  to 
follow  his  genius  into  the  regions  of  true  simplicity 
and  genuine  pathos  (as  is  evinced  by  the  exquisite 
ballad  of  *  Sir  Cauline  '  and  by  many  other  pieces), 
yet  when  he  appeared  in  his  own  person  and  character 
as  a  poetical  writer,  he  adopted,  as  in  the  tale  of  'The 
Hermit  of  Warkworth,'  a  diction  scarcely  distin- 
guishable from  the  vague,  the  glossy  and  unfeeling 
language  of  his  day."  Wordsworth  adds  that  he 
esteems  the  genius  of  Dr.  Percy  in  this  kind  of  writing 
superior  to  that  of  any  other  modern  writer;  and  that 
even  Burger  had  not  Percy's  fine  sensibility.  He 
quotes,  in  support  of  this  opinion,  two  stanzas  from 
"The  Child  of  Elle "  in  the  "  Reliques,"  and  con- 
trasts them  with  the  diluted  and  tricked-out  version 
of  the  same  in  Burger's  German. 

Mr.  Hales  does  not  agree  in  this  high  estimate  of 
Percy  as  a  ballad  composer.  Of  this  same  "  Child  of 
Elle"  he  says:  "The  present  fragment  of  a  version 


U' 


\ 


290  t/f  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

may  be  fairly  said  to  be  now  printed  for  the  first  time, 
as  in  the  *  Reliques  '  it  is  buried  in  a  heap  of  '  polished  ' 
verses  composed  by  Percy.  That  worthy  prelate, 
touched  by  the  beauty  of  it — he  had  a  soul — was  un- 
^happily  moved  to  try  his  hand  at  its  completion.  A 
.--^■wax-doll-maker  might  as  well  try  to  restore  Milo's 
Venus.  There  are  thirty-nine  lines  here.  There  are 
two  hundred  in  the  thing  called  the  '  Child  of  Elle  ' 
in  the  'Reliques.'  But  in  those  two  hundred  lines 
all  the  thirty-nine  originals  do  not  appear.  .  .  On  the 
whole,  the  union  of  the  genuine  and  the  false — of  the 
old  ballad  with  Percy's  tawdry  feebleness — makes 
about  as  objectionable  a  mesalliance  z.^  that  in  the  story 
itself  is  in  the  eyes  of  the  father."*  The  modern 
ballad  scholars,  in  their  zeal  for  the  purity  of  the  text, 
are  almost  as  hard  upon  Percy  as  Ritson  himself  was. 
They  say  that  he  polished  "The  Heir  of  Linne  "  till 
he  could  see  his  own  face  in  it;  and  swelled  out  its 
126  lines  to  216 — "a  fine  flood  of  ballad  and  water."  f 
The  result  of  this  piecing  and  tinkering  in  "  Sir  Cau- 
line  " — which  Wordsworth  thought  exquisite — they  re- 
gard as  a  heap  of  tinsel,  though  they  acknowledge  that 
*' these  additional  stanzas  show,  indeed,  an  extensive 
V'  acquaintance  with  old  balladry  and  a  considerable 
talent  of  imitation." 

From  the  critical  or  scholarly  point  of  view,  these 
strictures  are  doubtless  deserved.  It  is  an  editor's 
duty  to  give  his  text  as  he  finds  it,  without  interpola- 
tions  or  restorations;  and   it  is  unquestionable  that 

,,      /  *"  Bishop   Percy's   Folio    Manuscript"   (1867),   Vol.11.      Intro- 

'"^-       {         ductory  Essay  by  J.  W.  Hales  on  ' '  The  Revival  of  Ballad  Poetry  in 
I         the  Eighteenth  Century." 
t  Ibid. 


U 


T^ercy  and  the  ballads.  291 

Percy's  additions  to  fragmentary   pieces  are  full    of       \,,ir 
sentimentalism,  affectation,  and   the   spurious  poetic 
diction   of  his  age.     An  experienced   ballad  amateur 
can  readily  separate,  in  most  cases,  the  genuine  por- 
tions from  the   insertions.     But   it   is   unfair  to  try 
Percy  by  modern  editorial  canons.     That  sacredness 
which    is    now   imputed    to   the   ipsissima  verba  of  an   "^■^ 
ancient  piece   of  popular  literature   would  have  been 
unintelligible  to  men  of  that  generation,  who  regardedj 
such  things  as  trifles  at  best,  and  mostly  as  barbarous; 
trifles — something  like  wampum  belts,  or^ nose-rings,; 
or  antique  ornaments  in  the  goAt  barbare  et  charmant 
des  bijoux  goihs.     Percy's  readers  did  not  want  torsos; 
and  scraps;  to  present  them  with  acephalous  or  bob-  ^^^ 
tailed  ballads — with  cetera  desunt  and  constellations  of; 
asterisks — like   the  manuscript   in   Prior's  poem,    the 
conclusion   of   which   was  eaten   by   the   rats — would, 
have   been  mere  pedantry.     Percy  knew   his  public,, 
and  he  knew  how  to  make  his  work  attractive  to  it.. 
The  readers  of  that  generation  enjoyed  their  ballad 
with  a  large  infusion  of  Percy.     If  the  scholars  of  this 
generation  prefer  to  take  theirs  without,  they  know 
where  to  get  it. 

The  materials  for  the  "  Reliques  "  were  drawn  partly 
from  the  Pepys  collection^  at  Magdalen  College, 
Cambridge;  from  Anthony  Wood's,  made  in  1676,  in 
the  Ashmolean  Museum  at  Oxforcl;  from  maiius€ript 
and  printed  ballads  in  the  Bodleian,  the  British 
Museum,  the  archives  of  the  Antiquarian  Society, 
and  private  collections.  Sir  David  Dalrymple  sent 
a  number  of  Scotch  ballads,  and  the  editor 
acknowledged  obligations  to  Thomas  Warton  and 
many  others.     But   the    nucleus  of  the  whole  was  a 


292  <vf  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

certain  folio  manuscript  in  a  handwriting  of  Charles 
.,      I.'s   time,,  containing^  191    songs   and   ballads,  which 
{y'       Percy   had   begged,  when   still   very  young,  from  his 
friend  Humphrey  Pitt,  of  Prior's-Lee   in  Shropshire. 
When  he  first  saw  this  precious  document,  it  was  torn, 
unbound,  and   mutilated,    "lying   dirty    on   the    floor 
under  a  bureau  in  the  parlor,  being  used  by  the  maids 
to   light   the    fire."     The   first   and    last   leaves  were 
wanting,  and    "  of  54  pages  near  the  beginning,  half 
of  every  leaf  hath  been  torn  away."*     Percy  had  it 
bound,  but  the  binders  trimmed  off  the  top  and  bottom 
lines  in  the  process.     From  this  manuscript  he  pro- 
fessed to  have  taken  "  the  greater  part  "  of  the  pieces 
in  the  "Reliques."     In  truth  he  took  only  45  of  the 
176  poems  in  his  first  edition  from  this  source. 

Percy  made  no  secret  of  the  fact  that  he  filled 
lacimx  in  his  originals  with  stanzas,  and,  in  some 
\^  cases,  with  nearly  entire  poems  of  his  own  composi- 
tion. But  the  extent  of  the  liberties  that  he  took 
with  the  text,  although  suspected,  was  not  certainly 
known  until  Mr.  Furnivall  finally  got  leave  to  have 
the  folio  manuscript  copied  and  printed,  f  Before  this 
time  it  had  been  jealously  guarded  by  the  Percy  family, 
and  access  to  it  had  been  denied  to  scholars.  "  Since 
Percy  and  his  nephew  printed  their  fourth  edition  of 
the  '  Reliques  '  from  the  manuscript  in  1794,"  writes 
Mr.  Furnivall  in  his  "Forewords,"  "no  one  has 
printed  any  piece  from  it  except  Robert  Jamieson — to 
whom  Percy  supplied  a  copy  of  '  Child  Maurice  '  and 
'  Robin  Hood  and  the  Old  Man  '  for  his  '  Popular 
Ballads  and  Songs  '  (1806)— and  Sir  Frederic  Madden, 

*  "  Advertisement  to  the  Fourth  Edition." 
f  In  four  volumes,  1867-68. 


Tercy  and  the  'Ballads.  293 

who  was  allowed — by  one  of  Percy's  daughters — to  print 
'The  Grene  Knight,'    'The    Carle    of  Carlisle'    and 
'The    Turk  and  Gawin '    in  his    'Syr    Gawaine '   for 
the    Bannatyne    Club,    1839."      Percy    was    furiously 
assailed  by  Joseph  Ritson  for  manipulating  his  texts; 
and  in  the  1794  edition  he  made  some  concessions  to 
the  latter's  demand  for  a  literal  rescript,  by  taking  off 
a  few  of  the  ornaments  in  which  he  had  tricked  them. 
Ritson  was  a  thoroughly  critical,  conscientious  student 
of  poetic  antiquities  and  held  the  right  theory  of  an 
editor's    functions.     In    his  own  collections   of  early 
English   poetry  he  rendered  a  valuable  service  to  all 
later  inquirers.     These  included  "  Pieces  of  Ancient 
Popular     Poetry,"    1791;     "Ancient    Songs,"     1792; 
"  Scottish  Songs,"  1794;  "  Robin  Hood,"  1795;  besides 
editions  of  Laurence  Minot's  poems,  and  of  "  Gammer 
Gurton's  Needle,"  as  well  as  other  titles.     He  was  an 
ill-tempered  and   eccentric  man:  a  vegetarian,  a  free- 
thinker, a  spelling  reformer,  *  and  latterly  a  Jacobin. 
He  attacked   Warton  as  well  as  Percy,  and    used  to 
describe  any  clerical  antagonist  as  a  "  stinking  priesfj, 
He  died  insane   in  1803.     Ritson   took  issue  with   the|\ 
theory  maintained  in  Percy's  introductory  "Essay  on! 
the  Ancient  Minstrels,"  viz. :  that  the  minstrels  were? 
not  only  the  singers,  but  likewise  the  authors  of  the] 
ballads.     This  is  a  question  chiefly  interesting  to  an-- 
tiquaries.     But  Ritson  went  so  far  in  his  rage  against 
Percy  as  to  deny  the   existence  of  the  sacred  Folio 
Manuscript,   until   convinced   by  abundant   testimony 

*  Spelling  reform  has  been  a  favorite  field  for  cranks  to  disport 
themselves  upon.  Ritson's  particular  vanity  was  the  past  participle 
of  verbs  ending  in  e  ;  e.  g.,  perceiveed.  Cf.  Lander's  notions  of  a 
similar  kind. 


294  t^  History  of  English  T^pmanticism. 

that  there  was  such  a  thing.  It  was  an  age  of  forgeries, 
and  Ritson  was  not  altogether  without  justification  in 
supposing  that  the  author  of  "The  Hermit  of  Wark- 
worth  "  belonged  in  the  same  category  with  Chatterton, 
Ireland,  and  MacPherson. 

Percy,  like  Warton,  took  an  apologetic  tone  toward 
his  public.      "  In  a  polished  age,  like  the  present,"  he 
wrote,  "  I  am  sensible  that  many  of  these  reliques  of 
antiquity  will  require  great  allowances  to  be  made  for 
them.     Yet  have  they,  for  the  most  part,  a  pleasing 
simplicity   and   many   artless    graces,    which,    in   the 
opinion  of  no  mean  critics,  have  been  thought  to  com- 
pensate for  the  want  of  higher  beauties."     Indeed  how 
\  should  it  have  been  otherwise?     The  old  ballads  were 
I  everything  which    the    eighteenth   century   was   not. 
i  They  were  rough  and  wild,  where  that  was  smooth  and 
,  tame;  they  dealt,  with  fierce  sincerity,  in  the  elementary 
'  passions  of  human  nature.     They  did  not  moralize,  or 
I  philosophize,   or  sentimentalize;    were    never   subtle, 
t  intellectual,  or   abstract.     They   used   plain  English, 
^without  finery  or  elegance.     They  had  certain  popular 
mannerisms,  but  none  of  the  conventional  figures  of 
ispeech  or  rhetorical  artifices  like  personification,  per- 
Mphrasis,  antithesis,  and  climax,  so  dear  to  the  Augustan 
jheart.     They  were   intent  on   the  story — not  on  the 
I  style — and  they  just  told  it  and  let  it  go  for  what  it 
I  was  worth. 

Moreover,  there  are  ballads  and  ballads.  The  best 
of  them  are  noble  in  expression  as  well  as  feeling, 
unequaled  by  anything  in  our  mediaeval  poetry  out- 
side of  Chaucer;  unequaled  by  Chaucer  himself  in 
point  of  intensity,  in  occasional  phrases  of  a  piercing 
beauty: 


Tercy  and  the  ballads.  295 

" '  The  swans-fethars  that  his  arrowe  bar 
With  his  hart-blood  they  were  wet."  * 

*'  O  cocks  are  crowing  a  merry  mid-larf, 
A  wat  the  wild  fule  boded  day  ; 
The  salms  of  Heaven  will  be  sung, 
And  ere  now  I'll  be  missed  away,  "f 

"  If  my  love  were  an  earthly  knight, 
As  he's  an  elfin  gray, 
A  wad  na  gie  my  ain  true  love 
For  no  lord  that  ye  hae."  % 

"  She  hang  ae  napkin  at  the  door, 
Another  in  the  ha, 
And  a'  to  wipe  the  trickling  tears, 
Sae  fast  as  they  did  fa."  § 

"  And  all  is  with  one  chyld  of  yours, 
I  feel  stir  at  my  side: 
My  gowne  of  green,  it  is  too  strait: 
Before  it  was  too  wide."  || 

Verse  of  this  quality  needs  no  apology.  But  of  many 
of  the  ballads,  Dennis'  taunt,  repeated  by  Dr.  John- 
son, is  true;  they  are  not  merely  rude,  but  weak  and 
creeping  in  style.  Percy  knew  that  the  best  of  them 
would  savor  better  to  the  palates  of  his  contempo- 
raries if  he  dressed  them  with  modern  sauces.  Yet  he 
must  have  loved  them,  himself,  in  their  native  simplic- 
ity, and  it  seems  almost  incredible  that  he  could  have 
spoken  as  he  did  about  Prior's  insipid  paraphrase  of 
the  "  Nut  Brown  Maid."  "  If  it  had  no  other  merit," 
he  says  of  that  most  lovely  ballad,  "than  the  having 
afforded    the    ground-work    to    Prior's    *  Henry   and 

*  "  The  Hunting  of  the  Cheviot."  %  "Tarn  Lin." 

f  "  Sweet  William's  Ghost."  §  "  Fair  Annie." 

II  "  Child  Waters." 


296  eA  History  of  English  l^manticism. 

Emma,'  this  ought  to  preserve  it  from  oblivion." 
Prior  was  a  charming  writer  of  epigram,  society  verse, 
and  the  humorous  confe  in  the  manner  of  La  Fontaine; 
but  to  see  how  incapable  he  was  of  the  depth  and  sweet- 
ness of  romantic  poetry,  compare  a  few  lines  of  the 
original  with  the  "  hubbub  of  words  "  in  his  modern- 
ized version,  in  heroic  couplets: 

"  O  Lord,  what  is  this  worldes  blisse 
That  changeth  as  the  mone  ! 
The  somer's  day  in  lusty  May 
Is  derked  before  the  none. 
I  hear  you  say  farewel.     Nay,  nay, 
We  departe  not  so  soon : 
Why  say  ye  so  ?     Wheder  wyle  ye  goo  ? 
Alas!  what  have  ye  done? 
Alle  my  welfare  to  sorrow  and  care 
Shulde  change  if  ye  were  gon; 
For  in  my  minde,  of  all  mankynde, 
I  love  but  you  alone." 

Now  hear  Prior,  with  his  Venus  and  flames  and  god  of 
love: 

"  What  is  our  bliss  that  changeth  with  the  moon, 
And  day  of  life  that  darkens  ere  'tis  noon? 
What  is  true  passion,  if  unblest  it  dies? 
And  where  is  Emma's  joy,  if  Henry  flies  ? 
If  love,  alas!  be  pain,  the  pain  I  bear 
No  thought  can  figure  and  no  tongue  declare. 
Ne'er  faithful  woman  felt,  nor  false  one  feigned 
The  flames  which  long  have  in  my  bosom  reigned. 
The  god  of  love  himself  inhabits  there 
With  all  his  rage  and  dread  and  grief  and  care, 
His  complement  of  stores  and  total  war. 
O  cease  then  coldly  to  suspect  my  love, 
And  let  my  deed  at  least  my  faith  approve. 
Alas!  no  youth  shall  my  endearments  share: 
Nor  day  nor  night  shall  interrupt  my  care; 


Tercy  and  the  "Ballads.  297 

No  future  story  shall  with  truth  upbraid 
The  cold  indifference  of  the  nut-brown  maid; 
Nor  to  hard  banishment  shall  Henry  run 
"While  careless  Emma  sleeps  on  beds  of  down. 
View  me  resolved,  where'er  thou  lead'st,  to  go: 
Friend  to  thy  pain  and  partner  of  thy  woe; 
For  I  attest  fair  Venus  and  her  son 
That  I,  of  all  mankind,  will  love  but  thee  alone." 

There  could  be  no  more  striking  object  lesson  than 
this  of  the  plethora  from  which  English  poetic  diction 
was  suffering,  and  of  the  sanative  value  of  a  book  like 
the  "  Reliques." 

**To  atone  for  the  rudeness  of  the  more  obsolete 
poems,"  and  "  to  take  off  from  the  tediousness  of  the 
longer  narratives,"  Percy  interspersed  a  few  modern 
ballads  and  a  large  number  of  "little  elegant  pieces 
of  the  lyric  kind "  by  Skelton,  Hawes,  Gascoigne, 
Raleigh,  Marlowe,  Shakspere,  Jonson,  Warner,  Carew^ 
Daniel,  Lovelace,  Suckling,  Drayton,  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  Wotton,  and  other  well-known  poets.  Of 
the  modern  ballads  the  only  one  with  any  resemblance 
to  folk-poetry  was  "The  Braes  o'  Yarrow  "  by  William 
Hamilton  of  Bangour,  a  Scotch  gentleman  who  was 
"out  in  the  forty-five."  The  famous  border  stream  had 
watered  an  ancient  land  of  song  and  story,  and  Hamil- 
ton's ballad,  with  its  "strange,  fugitive  melody," 
was  not  unworthy  of  its  traditions.  Hamilton  belongs 
to  the  Milton  imitators  by  virtue  of  his  octosyllabics, 
"Contemplation."*  His  "Braes  o'  Yarrow"  had  been 
given  already  in  Ramsay's  "Tea  Table  Miscellany." 
The  opening  lines — 

"  Busk  ye,  busk  ye,  my  bonny,  bonny  bride, 
Busk  ye,  busk  ye,  my  winsome  marrow  " — 

*  See  Phelps'  "  English  Romantic  Movement,"  pp.  33-35. 


298  <i/J  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

are  quoted  in  Wordsworth's  "Yarrow  Unvisited,"  as 
well  as  a  line  of  the  following  stanza: 

"  Sweet  smells  the  birk,  green  grows,  green  grows  the  grass, 
Yellow  on  Yarrow's  bank  the  gowan: 
Fair  hangs  the  apple  frae  the  rock. 
Sweet  the  wave  of  Yarrow  flowin'." 

The  first  edition  of  the  ''Reliques"  included  one 
acknowledged  child  of  Percy's  muse,  ''The  Friar  of 
Orders  Grey,"  a  short,  narrative  ballad  made  up  of 
song  snatches  from  Shakspere's  plays.  Later  editions 
afforded  his  longer  poem,  "The  Hermit  of  Wark- 
worth,"  first  published  independently  in  1771. 

With  all  its  imperfections — perhaps  partly  in  con- 
"sequence  of  its  imperfections — the  "  Reliques  "  was  an 
epoch-making  book.  The  nature  of  its  service  to 
English  letters  is  thus  stated  by  Macaulay,  in  the 
introduction  to  his  "Lays  of  Ancient  Rome":  "We 
cannot  wonder  that  the  ballads  of  Rome  should  have 
altogether  disappeared,  when  we  remember  how  very 
narrowly,  in  spite  of  the  invention  of  printing,  those 
of  our  own  country  and  those  of  Spain  escaped  the 
same  fate.  There  is,  indeed,  little  doubt  that  oblivion 
covers  many  English  songs  equal  to  any  that  were  pub- 
lished by  Bishop  Percy;  and  many  Spanish  songs  as 
good  as  the  best  of  those  which  have  been  so  happily 
translated  by  Mr.  Lockhart.  Eighty  years  ago  Eng- 
land possessed  only  one  tattered  copy  of  *  Child 
Waters  *  and  *  Sir  Cauline,'  and  Spain  only  one  tat- 
tered copy  of  the  noble  poem  of  the  *  Cid.'  The  snuff 
of  a  candle,  or  a  mischievous  dog,  might  in  a  moment 
have  deprived  the  world  forever  of  any  of  those  fine 
compositions.  Sir  Walter  Scott,  who  united  to  the  fire 
of  a  great  poet  the  minute  Curiosity  and  patient  dili- 


Tercy  and  the  ballads. 


299 


gence  of  a  great  antiquary,  was  but  just  in  time  to  save 
the  precious  reliques  of  the  Minstrelsy  of  the  Border." 
But  Percy  not  only  rescued,  himself,  a  number  of 
ballads  from  forgetfulness;  what  was  equally  impor- 
tant, his  book  prompted  others  to  hunt  out  and  pub- 
lish similar  relics  before  it  was  too  late.     It  was  the 
occasion    of   collections  like^    Herd's    (1769),    Scott's 
(1802-03),  and  Motherwell's  (1827),  and  many  more,  , 
resting  on  purer  texts  and  edited  on  more  scrupulous 
principles    than    his   own.     Furthermore,   his   ballads  i 
helped  to  bring  about  a  reform  in  literary  taste  and  to 
inspire   men   of  original   genius.     Wordsworth,   Cole- 
ridge, Southey,   Scott,  all  acknowledged   the  greatest 
obligations  to  them.     Wordsworth  said  that  English 
poetry  "had  been   "absolutely  redeemed "   by  them. 
**  1  do  not  think  there  is  a  writer  in  verse  of  the  pres-  n 
ent  day  who  would   not  be  proud  to  acknowledge  his 
obligations  to  the  *  Reliques.'    I  know  that  it  is  so  with 
my  friends ;  and,  for  myself,  I  am  happy  in  this  occasion  / 
to  make  a  public  avowal  of  my  own."*     Without  the' 
"Reliques,"  "  The  Ancient  Mariner,"  "The  Lady  of  '^ 
the  Lake,"   "  La  Belle  Dame  sans  Merci,"  "  Stratton     \ 
Water,"    and   "  The  Haystack   in  the  Floods"   might     / 
never   have   been.     Perhaps  even  the    "  Lyrical  Bal- 
lads "  might  never  have  been,  or  might  have  been  some- 
thing quite  unlike  what  they  are.     Wordsworth,  to  be 
sure,    scarcely  ranks  among  romantics,    and    he    ex- 
pressly renounces  the  romantic  machinery: 


U^ 


"  The  dragon's  wing, 
The  magic  ring, 
I  shall  not  covet  for  my  dower."  f 

*  Appendix  to  the  Preface  to  the  2d  edition  of  "  Lyrical  Ballads, 
t  "  Peter  Bell." 


300  <iA  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

If  What  he  learned  from  the  popular  ballad  was  the  power 
^of  sincerity  and  of  direct  and  homely  speech. 

As  for  Scott,  he  has  recorded  in  an  oft-quoted 
passage  the  impression  that  Percy's  volumes  made 
upon  him  in  his  school-days:  "I  remember  well 
the  spot  where  I  read  these  volumes  for  the  first 
time.  It  was  beneath  a  huge  plantain  tree  in  the 
ruins  of  what  had  been  intended  for  an  old-fashioned 
arbor  in  the  garden  I  have  mentioned.  The  summer 
day  sped  onward  so  fast  that,  notwithstanding  the 
sharp  appetite  of  thirteen,  I  forgot  the  hour  of 
dinner,  was  sought  for  with  anxiety,  and  was  still 
found  entranced  in  my  intellectual  banquet.  To  read 
and  to  remember  was,  in  this  instance,  the  same 
thing;  and  henceforth  I  overwhelmed  my  school-fel- 
lows, and  all  who  would  hearken  to  me,  with  tragical 
recitations  from  the  ballads  of  Bishop  Percy.  The 
first  time,  too,  I  could  scrape  a  few  shillings  together, 
I  bought  unto  myself  a  copy  of  these  beloved  volumes; 
nor  do  I  believe  I  ever  read  a  book  so  frequently,  or 
with  half  the  enthusiasm." 

The  "Reliques"  worked  powerfully  in  Germany, 
too.  It  was  received  in  Lessing's  circle  with  universal 
enthusiasm,*  and  fell  in  with  that  newly  aroused  in- 
terest in  "Volkslieder  "  which  prompted  Herder's 
"  StimmenderVolker"  (1778-79).  f     GottfriedAugust 

*Scherer:  "  Geschichte  der  Deutschen  Literatur,"  p.  445. 

f  In  his  third  book  Herder  gave  translations  of  over  twenty  pieces 
■^  in  the  "  Reliques,"  besides  a  number  from  Ramsay's  and  other  collec- 
tions. His  selections  from  Percy  included  "Chevy  Chase,"  "  Ed- 
ward," "  The  Boy  and  the  Mantle,"  "  King  Estmere,"  "  Waly, 
Waly,"  "  Sir  Patrick  Spens,"  "  Young  Waters,"  "  The  Bonny  Earl  of 
Murray,"  "  Fair  Margaret  and  Sweet  William,"  "  Sweet  William's 
Ghost,"  "  The  Nut-Brown  Maid,"  "  The  Jew's  Daughter," etc.,  etc.; 


\^ 


Tercy  and  the  ballads.  301 

Burger,  in  particular,  was  a  poet  who  may  be  said  to 
have  been  made  by  the  English  ballad  literature,  of 
which  he  was  an  ardent  student.  His  poems  were 
published  in  1778,  and  included  five  translations  from 
Percy:  "The  Child  of  Elle"  ("Die  Entfuhrung"), 
"The  Friar  of  Orders  Grey"  ("  Graurock  "),  "The 
Wanton  Wife  of  Bath"  ("  Frau  Schnips "),  "King 
John  and  the  Abbot  of  Canterbury  "  ("  Der  Kaiser 
undder  Abt  "),  and  "  Child  Waters  "  ("  Graf  Walter"). 
A.  W.  Schlegel  says  that  Burger  did  not  select  the 
more  ancient  and  genuine  pieces  in  the  "Reliques"; 
and,  moreover,  that  he  spoiled  the  simplicity  of  the 
originals  in  his  translations.  It  was  doubtless  in  • 
part  the  success  of  the  "  Reliques"  that  is  answerable 
for  many  collections  of  old  English  poetry  put  forth  in  i 
the  last  years  of  the  century.  Tyrwhitt's  "Chaucer"/ 
and  Ritson's  publications  have  been  already  men- 
tioned. George  Ellis,  a  friend  and  correspondent  of 
Walter  Scott,  and  a  fellow  of  the  Society  of  Antiqua- 
ries, who  was  sometimes  called  "  the  Sainte  Palaye 
of  England,"  issued  his  "  Specimens  of  Early  English 
Poets"  in  1790;  edited  in  1796  G.  L.  Way's  transla- 
tions from  French  fabliaux  of  the  twelfth  and  thir- 
teenth centuries;  and  printed  in  1805  three  volumes 
of  "  Early  English  Metrical  Romances." 

but  none  of  the  Robin  Hood  ballads.  Herder's  preface  testifies  that 
the  "  Reliques  "  was  the  starting-point  and  the  kernel  of  his  whole 
undertaking.  "  Der  Anblick  dieser  Sammlung  giebts  offenbar  dass 
ich  eigentlich  von  Englischen  Volksliedern  ausging  und  auf  sie 
zuriickkomme.  Als  vor  zehn  und  mehr  Jahren  die  '  Reliques  of 
Ancient  Poetry  '  mir  in  die  Hande  fielen,  freuten  mich  einzelne  Stiicke 
so  sehr,  dass  ich  sie  zu  iibersetzen  versuchte." — Vorrecie  zu  den 
Volksliedern.  Herder's  Sdmmtliche  Werke,  Achter  Theil,  s.  89 
(Carlsruhe,  1821). 


302  <iA  History  of  English  T^manticism. 

It  is  pleasant  to  record  that  Percy's  labors  brought 
him  public  recognition  and  the  patronage  of  those 
whom  Dr.  Johnson  used  to  call  "  the  great."  He  had 
dedicated  the  "  Reliques  "  to  Elizabeth  Percy,  Countess 
of  Northumberland.  Himself  the  son  of  a  grocer,  he 
liked  to  think  that  he  was  connected  by  blood  with 
V      ,  the  great   northern  house  whose  exploits    had   been 

sung  by  the  ancient  minstrels-  that  he  loved.  He 
became  chaplain  to  the  Duke  of  Northumberland,  and 
to  King  George  III. ;  and,  in  1782,  Bishop  of  Dromore 
in  Ireland,  in  which  see  he  died  in  181 1. 

This  may  be  as  fit  a  place  as  any  to  introduce  some 
mention  of  "The  Minstrel,  or  the  Progress  of  Genius," 
by  James  Beattie;  a  poem  once  widely  popular,  in 
which  several  strands  of  romantic  influence  are  seen 
twisted  together.  The  first  book  was  published  in 
1771,  the  second  in  1774,  and  the  work  was  never  com- 
pleted. It  was  in  the  Spenserian  stanza,  was  tinged 
with  the  enthusiastic  melancholy  of  the  Wartons,  fol- 
lowed the  landscape  manner  of  Thomson,  had  elegiac 
echoes  of  Gray,  and  was  perhaps  not  unaffected,  in  its 
love  of  mountain  scenery,  by  MacPherson's  "Ossian." 
But  it  took  its  title  and  its  theme  from  a  hint  in  Percy's 
"Essay  on  the  Ancient  Minstrels."*  Beattie  was 
Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  the  University  of 
Aberdeen.  He  was  an  amiable,  sensitive,  deeply 
religious  man.  He  was  fond  of  music  and  of  nature, 
and  was  easily  moved  to  tears;  had  "a  young  girl's 
nerves,"  says  Taine,  "and  an  old  maid's  hobbies." 
Gray,  who  met  him  in  1765,  when  on  a  visit  to  the  Earl 

*  Stanzas  44-46,  book  i.,  bring  in  references  to  ballad  literature  in 
general  and  to  "  The  Nut-Brown  Maid  "  and  "  The  Children  in  the 
Wood  "  in  particular. 


Tercy  and  the  'ballads.  303 

of  Strathmore  at  Glammis  Castle,  esteemed  him 
highly.  So  did  Dr.  Johnson,  partly  because  of  his 
**  Essay  on  Truth  "  (1770),  a  shallow  invective  against 
Hume,  which  gained  its  author  an  interview  with 
George  III.  and  a  pension  of  two  hundred  pounds  a 
year.  Beattie  visited  London  in  1771,  and  figured  there 
as  a  champion  of  orthodoxy  and  a  heaven-inspired 
bard,  Mrs.  Montagu  patronized  him  extensively. 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  painted  his  portrait,  with  his 
"Essay  on  Truth  "  under  his  arm,  and  Truth  itself  in 
the  background,  an  allegoric  angel  holding  the  bal- 
ances in  one  hand,  and  thrusting  away  with  the  other 
the  figures  of  Prejudice,  Skepticism,  and  Folly.  Old 
Lord  Lyttelton  had  the  poet  out  to  Hagley,  and 
declared  that  he  was  Thomson  come  back  to  earth,  to 
sing  of  virtue  and  of  the  beauties  of  nature.  Oxford 
made  him  an  LL.  D. :  he  was  urged  to  take  orders  in 
the  Church  of  England;  and  Edinburgh  offered  him 
the  chair  of  Moral  Philosophy.  Beattie's  head  was 
slightly  turned  by  all  this  success,  and  he  became 
something  of  a  tuft-hunter.  But  he  stuck  faithfully 
to  Aberdeen,  whose  romantic  neighborhood  had  first 
inspired  his  muse.  The  biographers  tell  a  pretty 
story  of  his  teaching  his  little  boy  to  look  for  the  hand 
of  God  in  the  universe,  by  sowing  cress  in  a  garden 
plot  in  the  shape  of  the  child's  initials  and  leading  him 
by  this  gently  persuasive  analogy  to  read  design  in  the 
works  of  nature. 

The  design  of  ''  The  Minstrel  "  is  to  "trace  the  prog- 
ress of  a  Poetical  Genius,  born  in  a  rude  age,"  a 
youthful  shepherd  who  "lived  in  Gothic  days."  But 
nothing  less  truly  Gothic  or  mediaeval  could  easily  be 
imagined  than  the  actual  process  of  this  young  poet's 


304  c^  History  of  English  l^omanticism. 

education.     Instead  of  being  taught  to  carve  and  ride 

and  play  the  flute,  like  Chaucer's  squire  who 

"  Cowde  songes  make  and  wel  endite, 
Juste  and  eek  daunce,  and  wel  purtraye  and  write," 

Edwin  wanders  alone  upon  the  mountains  and  in  soli- 
tary places  and  is  instructed  in  history,  philosophy, 
and  science — and  even  in  Vergil — by  an  aged  hermit, 
who  sits  on  a  mossy  rock,  with  his  harp  beside  him,  and 
delivers  lectures.  The  subject  of  the  poem,  indeed,  is 
properly  the  education  of  nature;  and  in  a  way  it 
anticipates  Wordsworth's  "Prelude,"  as  this  hoary 
sage  does  the  "Solitary  "  of  "The  Excursion. "  Beattie 
justifies  his  use  of  Spenser's  stanza  on  the  ground  that 
it  "  seems,  from  its  Gothic  structure  and  original,  to 
bear  some  relation  to  the  subject  and  spirit  of  the 
poem."  He  makes  no  attempt,  however,  to  follow 
Spenser's  "antique  expressions."  The  following  pas- 
sage will  illustrate  as  well  as  any  the  romantic  charac- 
ter of  the  whole: 

' '  When  the  long-sounding  curfew  from  afar 
Loaded  with  loud  lament  the  lonely  gale, 
Young  Edwin,  lighted  by  the  evening  star, 
Lingering  and  listening,  wandered  down  the  vale. 
There  would  he  dream  of  graves  and  corses  pale, 
And  ghosts  that  to  the  chamel-dungeon  throng, 
And  drag  a  length  of  clanking  chain,  and  wail, 
Till  silenced  by  the  owl's  terrific  song. 
Or  blast  that  shrieks  by  fits  the  shuddering  aisles  along. 

"  Or  when  the  setting  moon,  in  crimson  dyed, 
Hung  o'er  the  dark  and  melancholy  deep. 
To  haunted  stream,  remote  from  man,  he  hied. 
Where  fays  of  yore  their  revels  wont  to  keep; 
And  there  let  Fancy  rove  at  large,  till  sleep 
A  vision  brought  to  his  entranced  sight. 


_1 


Tercy  and  the  ballads.  3^5 

And  first  a  wildly  murmuring  wind  gan  creep 

Shrill  to  his  ringing  ear;  then  tapers  bright, 

With  instantaneous  gleam,  illumed  the  vault  of  night. 

"  Anon  in  view  a  portal's  blazing  arch 

Arose  ;  the  trumpet  bids  the  valves  unfold  ; 

And  forth  a  host  of  little  warriors  march, 

Grasping  the  diamond  lance  and  targe  of  gold. 

Their  look  was  gentle,  their  demeanour  bold, 

And  green  their  helms,  and  green  their  silk  attire  ; 

And  here  and  there,  right  venerably  old. 

The  long-robed  minstrels  wake  the  warbling  wire, 

And  some  with  mellow  breath  the  martial  pipe  inspire."  * 

The  influence  of  Thomson  is  clearly  perceptible  in 
these  stanzas.  "The  Minstrel,"  like  "The  Seasons,"  . 
abounds  in  insipid  morality,  the  commonplaces  of  | 
denunciation  against  luxury  and  ambition,  and  the 
praise  of  simplicity  and  innocence.  The  titles  alone  of 
Beattie's  minor  poems  are  enough  to  show  in  what 
school  he  was  a  scholar:  "The  Hermit,"  "Ode  to 
Peace,"  "The  Triumph  of  Melancholy,"  "Retire- 
ment," etc.,  etc.  "The  Minstrel"  ran  through  four 
editions  before  the  publication  of  its  second  book  in 
1774. 

*  Book  I.  stanzas  32-34. 


CHAPTER  IX. 
©00ian. 

In  1760  appeared  the  first  installment  of  MacPher- 
son's  "  Ossian."  *  Among  those  who  received  it  with 
the  greatest  curiosity  and  delight  was  Gray,  who  had 
recently  been  helping  Mason  with  criticisms  on  his 
"  Caractacus,"  published  in  1759.  From  a  letter  to 
Walpole  (June,  1760)  it  would  seem  that  the  latter 
had  sent  Gray  two  manuscript  bits  of  the  as  yet  un- 
printed  "Fragments,"  communicated  to  Walpole  by 
Sir  David  Dalrymple,  who  furnished  Scotch  ballads  to 
Percy.  "  I  am  so  charmed,"  wrote  Gray,  "with  the 
two  specimens  of  Erse  poetry,  that  I  cannot  help  giv- 
ing you  the  trouble  to  inquire  a  little  farther  about 
them;  and  should  wish  to  see  a  few  lines  of  the  origi- 
nal, that  I  may  form  some  slight  idea  of  the  language, 
the  measures  and  the  rhythm.  Is  there  anything 
known  of  the  author  or  authors;  and  of  what  antiquity 
are  they  supposed  to  be?  Is  there  any  more  to  be  had 
of  equal  beauty,  or  at  all  approaching  it?" 

In  a  letter  to  Stonehewer  (June  29,)  he  writes:  "  I 
have  received  another  Scotch  packet  with  a  third 
specimen   .    .    .    full  of  nature  and  noble  wild  imagina- 

*  ' '  Fragments  of  Ancient  Poetry  collected  in  the  Highlands  of 
Scotland,  and  translated  from  the  Gaelic  or  Erse  language."  Edin- 
burgh, MDCCLX.     70  pp. 

306   « 


Osstan.  307 

tion."*  And  in  the  month  following  he  writes  to 
Wharton:  "If  you  have  seen  Stonehewer,  he  has 
probably  told  you  of  my  old  Scotch  (or  rather  Irish) 
poetry.  I  am  gone  mad  about  them.  They  are  said 
to  be  translations  (literal  and  in  prose)  from  the  Erse 
tongue,  done  by  one  MacPherson,  a  young  clergyman 
in  the  Highlands.  He  means  to  publish  a  collection 
he  has  of  these  specimens  of  antiquity,  if  it  be  an- 
tiquity; but  what  plagues  me,  is,  I  cannot  come  at  any 
certainty  on  that  head.  I  was  so  struck,  so  extasie 
with  their  infinite  beauty,  that  I  writ  into  Scotland  to 
make  a  thousand  enquiries."  This  is  strong  language 
for  a  man  of  Gray's  coolly  critical  temper;  but  all  his 
correspondence  of  about  this  date  is  filled  with  refer- 
ences to  Ossian  which  enable  the  modern  reader  to 
understand  in  part  the  excitement  that  the  book 
created  among  Gray's  contemporaries.  The  letters 
that  he  got  from  MacPherson  were  unconvincing, 
"ill-wrote,  ill-reasoned,  calculated  to  deceive,  and  yet 
not  cunning  enough  to  do  it  cleverly."  The  external 
evidence  disposed  him  to  believe  the  poems  counter- 
feit; but  the  impression  which  they  made  was  such 
that  he  was  "  resolved  to  believe  them  genuine,  spite 
of  the  Devil  and  the  Kirk.  It  is  impossible  to  con- 
vince me  that  they  were  invented  by  the  same  man 
that  writes  me  these  letters.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
almost  as  hard  to  suppose,  if  they  are  original,  that  he 
should  be  able  to  translate  them  so  admirably." 

On  August  7  he  v^rites  to  Mason  that  the  Erse 
fragments  have  been  published  five  weeks  ago  in  Scot- 
land, though  he  had  not  received  his  copy  till  the  last 

*  This  was  sent  him  by  MacPherson  and  was  a  passage  not  given  in 
the  "  Fragments." 


30 8  <iA  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

week.  **  I  continue  to  think  them  genuine,  though 
my  reasons  for  believing  the  contrary  are  rather 
stronger  than  ever."  David  Hume,  who  afterward 
became  skeptical  as  to  their  authenticity,  wrote  to 
Gray,  assuring  him  that  these  poems  were  in  every- 
body's mouth  in  the  Highlands,  and  had  been  handed 
down  from  father  to  son,  from  an  age  beyond  all 
memory  and  tradition.  Gray's  final  conclusion  is  very 
much  the  same  with  that  of  the  general  public,  to 
which  the  Ossianic  question  is  even  yet  a  puzzle.  "  I 
remain  still  in  doubt  about  the  authenticity  of  these 
poems,  tho'  inclining  rather  to  believe  them  genuine 
in  spite  of  the  world.  Whether  they  are  the  inven- 
tions of  antiquity,  or  of  a  modern  Scotchman,  either 
case  is  to  me  alike  unaccountable.     Je  irCy perds." 

We  are  more  concerned  here  with  the  impression 
which  MacPherson's  books,  taking  them  just  as  they 
stand,  made  upon  their  contemporary  Europe,  than 
with  the  history  of  the  controversy  to  which  they  gave 
rise,  and  which  is  still  unsettled  after  more  than  a 
century  and  a  quarter  of  discussion.  Nevertheless,  as 
this  controversy  began  immediately  upon  their  publi- 
cation, and  had  reference  not  only  to  the  authenticity 
of  the  Ossianic  poems,  but  also  to  their  literary  value; 
it  cannot  be  altogether  ignored  in  this  account.  The 
principal  facts  upon  which  it  turned  may  be  given  in  a 
nut-shell.  In  1759  Mr.  John  Home,  author  of  the 
tragedy  of  "  Douglas,"  who  had  become  interested  in 
the  subject  of  Gaelic  poetry,  met  in  Dumfriesshire  a 
young  Scotchman,  named  James  MacPherson,  who 
was  traveling  as  private  tutor  to  Mr.  Graham  of  Bal- 
gowan.  MacPherson  had  in  his  possession  a  number 
of  manuscripts  which,    he   said,    were    transcripts   of 


Ossian.  309 

Gaelic  poems  taken  down  from  the  recital  of  old  peo- 
ple in  the  Highlands.  He  translated  two  of  these  for 
Home,  who  was  so  much  struck  with  them  that  he  sent 
or  showed  copies  to  Dr.  Hugh  Blair,  Professor  of 
Rhetoric  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  At  the 
solicitation  of  Dr.  Blair  and  Mr.  Home,  MacPherson 
was  prevailed  upon  to  make  further  translations  from 
the  materials  in  his  hands;  and  these,  to  the  number 
of  sixteen,  were  published  in  the  ''Fragments"  already 
mentioned,  with  a  preface  of  eight  pages  by  Blair. 
They  attracted  so  much  attention  in  Edinburgh  that 
a  subscription  was  started,  to  send  the  compiler 
through  the  Highlands  in  search  of  more  Gaelic 
poetry. 

The  result  of  these  researches  was  "  Fingal,  an  An- 
cient Epic  Poem  in  Six  Books:  Together  with  several 
other  poems,  composed  by  Ossian  the  son  of  Fingal. 
Translated  from  the  Gaelic  language  by  James  Mac- 
Pherson," London,  1762;  together  with  "  Temora,  an 
Ancient  Epic  Poem  in  Eight  Books,"  etc.,  etc.,  Lon- 
don, 1763.  MacPherson  asserted  that  he  had  made 
his  versions  from  Gaelic  poems  ascribed  to  Ossian  or 
Oisin,  the  son  of  Fingal  or  Finn  MacCumhail,  a  chief 
renowned  in  Irish  and  Scottish  song  and  popular 
legend.  Fingal  was  the  king  of  Morven,  a  district  of 
the  western  Highlands,  and  head  of  the  ancient  war- 
like clan  or  race  of  the  Feinne  or  Fenians.  Tradition 
placed  him  in  the  third  century  and  connected  him 
with  the  battle  of  Gabhra,  fought  in  281.  His  son, 
Ossian,  the  warrior-bard,  survived  all  his  kindred. 
Blind  and  old,  seated  in  his  empty  hall,  or  the  cave  of 
the  rock;  alone  save  for  the  white-armed  Malvina, 
bride  of  his  dead  son,  Oscar,  he  struck  the  harp  and 


3IO  dA  History  of  English  'T^pmanticism. 

sang  the  memories  of  his  youth:  "a  tale  of  the  times 
of  old." 

MacPherson  translated — or  composed — his  "  Os- 
sian "  in  an  exclamatory,  abrupt,  rhapsodical  prose, 
resembling  somewhat  the  English  of  Isaiah  and  others 
of  the  books  of  the  prophets.  The  manners  described 
were  heroic,  the  state  of  society  primitive.  The  prop- 
erties were  few  and  simple;  the  cars  of  the  heroes, 
their  spears,  helmets,  and  blue  shields;  the  harp,  the 
shells  from  which  they  drank  in  the  hall,  etc.  Con- 
ventional compound  epithets  abound,  as  in  Homer: 
the  "dark-bosomed"  ships,  the  "car-borne  "  heroes, 
the  "  white-armed  "  maids,  the  "  long-bounding  "  dogs 
of  the  chase.  The  scenery  is  that  of  the  western 
Highlands;  and  the  solemn  monotonous  rhythm  of 
MacPherson's  style  accorded  well  with  the  tone 
of  his  descriptions,  filling  the  mind  with  images  of 
vague  sublimity  and  desolation:  the  mountain  torrent, 
the  dark  rock  in  the  ocean,  the  mist  on  the  hills,  the 
ghosts  of  heroes  half  seen  by  the  setting  moon,  the 
thistle  in  the  ruined  courts  of  chieftains,  the  grass 
whistling  on  the  windy  heath,  the  blue  stream  of 
Lutha,  and  the  cliffs  of  sea-surrounded  Gormal.  It 
was  noticed  that  there  was  no  mention  of  the  wolf, 
common  in  ancient  Caledonia;  nor  of  the  thrush  or 
lark  or  any  singing  bird ;  nor  of  the  salmon  of  the  sea- 
lochs,  so  often  referred  to  in  niodern  Gaelic  poetry. 
But  the  deer,  the  swan,  the  boar,  eagle,  and  raven 
occur  repeatedly. 

But  a  passage  or  two  will  exhibit  the  language  and 
imagery  of  the  whole  better  than  pages  of  descrip- 
tion. "I  have  seen  the  walls  of  Balclutha,  but  they 
were  desolate.     The  fire  had  resounded  in  the  halls, 


Ossian.  S^' 

and  the  voice  of  the  people  is  heard  no  more.  The 
stream  of  Clutha  was  removed  from  its  place  by  the 
fall  of  the  walls.  The  thistle  shook  there  its  lonely 
head;  the  moss  whistled  to  the  wind.  The  fox  looked 
out  from  the  windows,  the  rank  grass  of  the  wall 
waved  round  its  head.  Desolate  is  the  dwelling  of 
Moina,  silence  is  in  the  house  of  her  fathers.  Raise 
the  song  of  mourning,  O  bards,  over  the  land  of 
strangers.  They  have  but  fallen  before  us;  for,  one 
day,  we  must  fall.  Why  dost  thou  build  the  hall,  son 
of  the  winged  days?  Thou  lookest  from  thy  towers 
to-day;  yet  a  few  years,  and  the  blast  of  the  desert 
comes;  it  howls  in  thy  empty  court,  and  whistles 
round  thy  half-worn  shield."*  "They  rose  rustling 
like  a  flock  of  sea-fowl  when  the  waves  expel  them 
from  the  shore.  Their  sound  was  like  a  thousand 
streams  that  meet  in  Cona's  vale,  when,  after  a  stormy 
night,  they  turn  their  dark  eddies  beneath  the  pale 
light  of  the  morn.  As  the  dark  shades  of  autumn  fly 
over  hills  of  grass;  so,  gloomy,  dark,  successive  came 
the  chiefs  of  Lochlin'sf  echoing  woods.  Tall  as  the 
stag  of  Morven,  moved  stately  before  them  the  King.  J 
His  shining  shield  is  on  his  side,  like  a  flame  on  the 
heath  at  night;  when  the  world  is  silent  and  dark,  and 
the  traveler  sees  some  ghost  sporting  in  the  beam. 
Dimly  gleam  the  hills  around,  and  show  indistinctly 
their  oaks.  A  blast  from  the  troubled  ocean  removed 
the  settled  mist.  The  sons  of  Erin  appear,  like  a 
ridge  of  rocks  on  the  coast;  when  mariners,  on  shores 
unknown  are  trembling  at  veering  winds."  § 

The  authenticity  of  the  "Fragments"  of  1760  had 

*From  "  Carthon."  ;}:  An  unconscious  hexameter, 

f  Scandinavia.  §  From  "  Fingal,"  book  ii. 


312  c/f  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

not  passed  without  question;  but  when  MacPherson 
brought  forward  entire  epics  which,  he  asserted,  were 
composed  by  a  Highland  bard  of  the  third  century, 
handed  down  through  ages  by  oral  tradition,  and 
finally  committed — at  least  in  part — to  writing  and 
now  extant  in  manuscripts  in  his  possession,  there 
ensued  at  once  a  very  emphatic  expression  of  in- 
credulity. Among  the  most  truculent  of  the  disbe- 
lievers was  Dr.  Johnson.  He  had  little  liking  for 
Scotland,  still  less  for  the  poetry  of  barbarism.  In 
his  tour  of  the  Western  Islands  with  Boswell  in  1773, 
he  showed  an  insensibility,  and  even  a  kind  of  hos- 
tility, to  the  wild  beauties  of  Highland  scenery,  which 
gradually  affects  the  reader  with  a  sense  of  the  ludi- 
crous as  he  watches  his  sturdy  figure  rolling  along  on 
a  small  Highland  pony  by  sequestered  Loch  Ness, 
with  its  fringe  of  birch  trees,  or  between  the  prodigious 
mountains  that  frown  above  Glensheal;  or  seated  in  a 
boat  off  the  Mull  of  Cantyre,  listening  to  the  Erse 
songs  of  the  rowers: 

"  Breaking  the  silence  of  the  seas 
Among  the  farthest  Hebrides." 

"Dr.  Johnson,"  says  Boswell,  "owned  he  was  now  in 
a  scene  of  as  wild  nature  as  he  could  see;  but  he  cor- 
rected me  sometimes  in  my  inaccurate  observations. 
'  There, '  said  I,  '  is  a  mountain  like  a  cone. '  Johnson : 
'  No,  sir.  It  would  be. called  so  in  a  book,  but  when 
a  man  comes  to  look  at  i.t,  he  sees  it  is  not  so.  It  is 
indeed  pointed  at  the  top,  but  one  side  of  it  is  larger 
than  the  other.'  Another  mountain  I  called  immense. 
Johnson:  'No;  it  is  no  more  than  a  considerable 
protuberance.'  " 


Ossian.  313 

Johnson  not  only  disputed  the  antiquity  of  Mac- 
Pherson's  "Ossian,"  but  he  denied  it  any  poetic 
merit.  Dr.  Blair  having  asked  him  whether  he  thought 
any  man  of  a  modern  age  could  have  written  such 
poems,  he  answered:  "Yes,  sir:  many  men,  many 
women  and  many  children."  "  Sir,"  he  exclaimed  to 
Reynolds,  "a  man  might  write  such  stuff  forever,  if 
he  would  abandon  his  mind  to  it."  To  Mr.  Mac- 
Queen,  one  of  his  Highland  hosts,  he  said:  "  I  look 
upon  MacPherson's  '  Fingal'  to  be  as  gross  an  impo- 
sition as  ever  the  world  was  troubled  with."  Johnson's 
arguments  were  mostly  a  priori.  He  asserted  that 
the  ancient  Gael  were  a  barbarous  people,  incapable 
of  producing  poetry  of  the  kind.  Long  epics,  such  as 
"  Fingal  "  and  "Temora,"  could  not  be  preserved  in 
memory  and  handed  down  by  word  of  mouth.  As  to 
ancient  manuscripts  which  MacPherson  pretended  to 
have,  there  was  not  a  Gaelic  manuscript  in  existence 
a  hundred  years  old. 

It  is  now  quite  well  established  that  Dr.  Johnson 
was  wrong  on  all  these  points.  To  say  nothing  of  the 
Homeric  poems,  the  ancient  Finns,  Scandinavians, 
and  Germans  were  as  barbarous  as  the  Gael;  yet  they 
produced  the  Kalewala,  the  Edda,  and  the  Nibelungen 
Lied.  The  Kalewala,  a  poem  of  22,793  lines— as  long 
as  the  Iliad — was  transmitted  orally  from  a  remote 
antiquity  and  first  printed  in  1849.  As  to  Gaelic 
manuscripts,  there  are  over  sixty  in  the  Advocates' 
Library  at  Edinburgh,  varying  in  age  from  three  hun- 
dred  to   five   hundred    years.*     There   is,  e.   g.,    the 

*See  the  dissertation  by  Rev.  Archibald  Clerk  in  his  "  Poems  of 
Ossian  in  the  Original  Gaelic,  with  a  literal  translation  into  English." 
2  vols.,  Edinburgh,  1870. 


314  e^  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

"  Glenmasan  Manuscript"  of  the  year  1238,  contain- 
ing the  story  of  "  Darthula,"*  which  is  the  ground- 
work of  the  same  story  in  MacPherson's  "Ossian." 
There  is  the  important  "  Dean  of  Lismore's  Book,"  a 
manuscript  collection  made  by  Dean  MacGregor  of 
Lismore,  Argyleshire,  between  1512  and  1529,  con- 
taining 11,000  lines  of  Gaelic  poetry,  some  of  which  is 
attributed  to  Ossian  or  Oisin.  One  of  the  poems  is 
identical  in  substance  with  the  first  book  of  MacPher- 
son's *'Temora;"  although  Mr.  Campbell  says, 
**  There  is  not  one  line  in  the  Dean's  book  that  I  can 
identify  with  any  line  in  MacPherson's  Gaelic."  f 

Other  objections  to  the  authenticity  of  Mac  Pher- 
son's  translations  rested  upon  internal  evidence,  upon 
their  characteristics  of  thought  and  style.  It  was 
alleged  that  the  "peculiar  tone  of  sentimental  gran- 
deur and  melancholy "  which  distinguishes  them,  is 
false  to  the  spirit  of  all  known  early  poetry,  and  is 
a  modern  note.  In  particular,  it  was  argued,  Mac- 
Pherson's heroes  are  too  sensitive  to  the  wild  and 
sublime  in  nature.  Professor  William  R.  Sullivan, 
a  high  authority  on  Celtic  literature,  says  that  in  the 
genuine  and  undoubted  remains  of  old  Irish  poetry 
belonging  to  the  Leinster  or  Finnian  Cycle  and 
ascribed  to  Oisin,  there  is  much  detail  in  descriptions 
of  arms,  accouterments,   and   articles    of   indoor    use 

*  This  story  has  been  retold,  from  Irish  sources,  in  Dr.  R.  D. 
Joyce's  poem  of  "  Deirdre, "  Boston,  1876. 

fSee  "  Leabhar  na  Feinne,  Heroic  Gaelic  Ballads,  Collected  in 
Scotland,  chiefly  from  1512  to  1871.  Arranged  by  J.  F.  Campbell." 
London,  1872.  Selections  from  "The  Dean  of  Lismore's  Book" 
were  edited  and  published  at  Edinburgh  in  1862,  by  Rev.  Thomas 
MacLauchlan,  with  a  learned  introduction  by  Mr,  W.  F.  Skene. 


Ossian.  315 

and  ornament,  but  very  little  in  descriptions  of  out- 
ward nature.*  On  the  other  hand,  the  late  Principal 
Shairp  regards  this  "sadness  of  tone  in  describing 
nature"  as  a  strong  proof  of  authenticity.  "Two 
facts,"  he  says,  "are  enough  to  convince  me  of  the 
genuineness  of  the  ancient  Gaelic  poetry.  The  truth- 
fulness with  which  it  reflects  the  melancholy  aspects 
of  Highland  scenery,  the  equal  truthfulness  with 
which  it  expresses  the  prevailing  sentiment  of  the 
Gael,  and  his  sad  sense  of  his  people's  destiny.  I  need 
no  other  proofs  that  the  Ossianic  poetry  is  a  native 
formation,  and  comes  from  the  primeval  heart  of  the 
Gaelic  race."  f  And  he  quotes,  in  support  of  his 
view,  a  well-known  passage  from  Matthew  Arnold's 
"Study  of  Celtic  Literature":  "The  Celts  are  the 
prime  authors  of  this  vein  of  piercing  regret  and 
passion,  of  this  Titanism  in  poetry.  A  famous  book, 
MacPherson's  '  Ossian,'  carried,  in  the  last  century, 
this  vein  like  a  flood  of  lava  through  Europe.  I  am 
not  going  to  criticise  MacPherson's  '  Ossian  '  here. 
Make  the  part  of  what  is  forged,  modern,  tawdry, 
spurious  in  the  book  as  large  as  you  please;  strip 
Scotland,  if  you  like,  of  every  feather  of  borrowed 
plumes  which,  on  the  strength  of  MacPherson's  'Os- 
sian,' she  may  have  stolen  from  that  vetus  et  major 
Scotia — Ireland;  I  make  no  objection.  But  there  will 
still  be  left  in  the  book  a  residue  with  the  very  soul  of 
the  Celtic  genius  in  it;  and  which  has  the  proud  dis- 
tinction of  having  brought  this  soul  of  the  Celtic 
genius    into    contact    with    the    nations    of    modern 

*  Article  on  "Celtic  Literature"  in  the  "  Encyclopaedia  Britannica." 
f  "  Aspects  of  Poetry,"  by  J.  C.  Shairp,  1872,  pp.  244-45  (Ameri- 
can Edition). 


31 6  A  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

Europe,  and  enriched  all  our  poetry  by  it.  Woody 
Morven,  and  echoing  Lora,  and  Selma  with  its  silent 
halls!  We  all  owe  them  a  debt  of  gratitude,  and  when 
we  are  unjust  enough  to  forget  it,  may  the  Muse  for- 
get us!  Choose  any  one  of  the  better  passages  in 
MacPherson's  'Ossian,'and  you  can  see,  even  at  this 
time  of  day,  what  an  apparition  of  newness  and  of 
power  such  a  strain  must  have  been  in  the  eighteenth 
century." 

But  from  this  same  kind  of  internal  evidence, 
Wordsworth  draws  just  the  opposite  conclusion. 
"The  phantom  was  begotten  by  the  snug  embrace  of 
an  impudent  Highlander  upon  a  cloud  of  tradition. 
It  traveled  southward,  where  it  was  greeted  with 
acclamation,  and  the  thin  consistence  took  its  course 
through  Europe  upon  the  breath  of  popular  applause.* 
.  .  Open  this  far-famed  book !  I  have  done  so  at  ran- 
dom, and  the  beginning  of  the  epic  poem  'Temora,' 
in  eight  books,  presents  itself.  '  The  blue  waves  of 
Ullin  roll  in  light.  The  green  hills  are  covered  with 
day.  Trees  shake  their  dusky  heads  in  the  breeze. 
Gray  torrents  pour  their  noisy  streams.  Two  green 
hills  with  aged  oaks  surround  a  narrow  plain.  The 
blue  course  of  a  stream  is  there.  On  its  banks  stood 
Cairbar  of  Atha.  His  spear  supports  the  king:  the 
red  eyes  of  his  fear  are  sad.  Cormac  rises  on  his  soul 
with  all  his  ghastly  wounds.  .  .'  Having  had  the  good 
fortune  to  be  born  and  reared  in  a  mountainous  coun- 

*  Appendix  to  the  Preface  to  the  Second  Edition  of  "  Lyrical  Bal- 
lads." Taine  says  that  Ossian  "  with  Oscar,  Malvina,  and  his  whole 
troop,  made  the  tour  of  Europe;  and,  about  1830,  ended  by  furnishing 
baptismal  names  for  French  grisettts  and  perruquiers." — English 
Literature,  Vol.  II.  p.  220  (American  Edition). 


Ossian.  3^7 

try,  from  my  very  childhood  I  have  felt  the  falsehood 
that  pervades  the  volumes  imposed  upon  the  world 
under  the  name  of  Ossian.  From  what  I  saw  with  my 
own  eyes,  I  knew  that  the  imagery  was  spurious.  In 
nature  everything  is  distinct,  yet  nothing  defined 
into  absolute,  independent  singleness.  In  MacPher- 
son's  work  it  is  exactly  the  reverse:  everything  (that 
is  not  stolen)  is  in  this  manner  defined,  insulated, 
dislocated,  deadened,  yet  nothing  distinct.  It  will 
always  be  so  when  words  are  substituted  for  things. 
To  say  that  the  characters  never  could  exist;  that  the 
manners  are  impossible;  and  that  a  dream  has  more 
substance  than  the  whole  state  of  society,  as  there 
depicted,  is  doing  nothing  more  than  pronouncing 
a  censure  which  MacPherson  defied.  .  .  Yet,  much 
as  these  pretended  treasures  of  antiquity  have  been 
admired,  they  have  been  wholly  uninfluential  upon  the 
literature  of  the  country.  No  succeeding  writer  ap- 
pears to  have  caught  from  them  a  ray  of  inspiration; 
no  author  in  the  least  distinguished  has  ventured  for- 
mally to  imitate  them,  except  the  boy  Chatterton,  on 
their  first  appearance.  .  .  This  incapability  to  amal- 
gamate  with  the  literature  of  the  Island  is,  in  my  esti- 
mation, a  decisive  proof  that  the  book  is  essentially 
unnatural;  nor  should  I  require  any  other  to  demon- 
strate it  to  be  a  forgery,  audacious  as  worthless. 
Contrast,  in  this  respect,  the  effect  of  MacPherson's 
publication  with  the  '  Reliques '  of  Percy,  so  unas- 
suming, so  modest  in  their  pretensions." 

Other  critics  have  pointed  out  a  similar  indistinct- 
ness in  the  human  actors,  no  less  than  in  the  landscape 
features  of  "  Fingal  "  and  "  Temora."  They  have  no 
dramatic  individuality,  but  are  all  alike,  and  all  ex- 


3i8  iA  History  of  English  Romanticism, 

tremely  shadowy,  "  Poor,  moaning,  monotonous  Mac- 
Pherson"  is  Carlyle's  alliterative  description  of  the 
translator  of  **Ossian";  and  it  must  be  confessed 
that,  in  spite  of  the  deep  poetic  feeling  which  per- 
vades these  writings,  and  the  undeniable  beauty  of 
single  passages,  they  have  damnable  iteration.  The 
burden  of  their  song  is  a  burden  in  every  sense,  Mr. 
Malcolm  Laing,  one  of  MacPherson's  most  persistent 
adversaries,  who  published  "  Notes  and  Illustrations  to 
Ossian  "  in  1805,  essayed  to  show,  by  a  minute  analysis 
of  the  language,  that  the  whole  thing  was  a  fabrica- 
tion, made  up  from  Homer,  Milton,  the  English  Bible, 
and  other  sources.  Thus  he  compared  MacPherson's 
**  Like  the  darkened  moon  when  she  moves,  a  dim 
circle,  through  heaven,  and  dreadful  change  is  expected 
by  men,"  with  Milton's 

"  Or  from  behind  the  moon, 
In  dim  eclipse,  disastrous  twilight  sheds 
On  half  the  nations,  and  with  fear  of  change 
Perplexes  monarchs." 

Laing's  method  proves  too  much  and  might  be  applied 
with  like  results  to  almost  any  literary  work.  And, 
in  general,  it  is  hazardous  to  draw  hard  and  fast  con- 
clusions from  internal  evidence  of  the  sort  just  re- 
viewed. Taken  altogether,  these  objections  do  leave 
a  strong  bias  upon  the  mind,  and  were  one  to 
pronounce  upon  the  genuineness  of  MacPherson's 
"  Ossian,"  as  a  whole,  from  impressions  of  tone  and 
style,  it  might  be  guessed  that  whatever  element 
of  true  ancient  poetry  it  contains,  it  had  been  thor- 
oughly steeped  in  modern  sentiment  before  it  was 
put  before  the  public.     But  rerhembering  Beowulf  and 


Ossian.  3^9 

the  Norse  mythology,  one  might  hesitate  to  say  that 
the  songs  of  primitive,  heroic  ages  are  always  insensi- 
ble to  the  sublime  in  nature;  or  to  admit  that  melan- 
choly is  a  Celtic  monopoly. 

The  most  damaging  feature  of  MacPherson's  case 
was  his  refusal  or  neglect  to  produce  his  originals. 
The  testimony  of  those  who  helped  him  in  collecting 
and  translating  leaves  little  doubt  that  he  had 
materials  of  some  kind;  and  that  these  consisted 
partly  of  old  Gaelic  manuscripts,  and  partly  of  tran- 
scriptions taken  down  in  Gaelic  from  the  recitation  of 
aged  persons  in  the  Highlands.  These  testimonies 
may  be  read  in  the  "  Report  of  the  Committee  of  the 
Highland  Society,"  Edinburgh,  1805.*  It  is  too 
voluminous  to  examine  here,  and  it  leaves  unsettled 
the  point  as  to  the  precise  use  which  MacPherson 
made  of  his  materials,  whether,  /.  e.,  he  gave  literal 
renderings  of  them,  as  he  professed  to  do;  or  whether 
he  manipulated  them — and  to  what  extent — by  piecing 
fragments  together,  lopping,  dove-tailing,  smoothing, 
interpolating,  modernizing,  as  Percy  did  with  his 
ballads.     He    was    challenged    to    show    his    Gaelic 

*  The  Committee  found  that  Gaelic  poems,  and  fragments  of 
poems,  which  they  had  been  able  to  obtain,  contained  often  the  sub- 
stance, and  sometimes  the  "  literal  expression  (the  ipsissima  verba)  " 
of  passages  given  by  MacPherson.  "  But,"  continues  the  "  Report," 
"  the  Committee  has  not  been  able  to  obtain  any  one  poem  the  same 
in  title  and  tenor  with  the  poems  published  by  him.  It  is  inclined 
to  believe  that  he  was  in  use  to  supjaly  chasms  and  to  give  connection, 
by  inserting  passages  which  he  did  not  find  ;  and  to  add  what  he 
conceived  to  be  dignity  arfd  delicacy  to  the  original  composition,  by 
striking  out  passages,  by  softening  incidents,  by  refining  the  language: 
in  short,  by  changing  what  he  considered  as  too  simple  or  too  rude 
for  a  modern  ear." 


320  c^  History  of  English  %Ofnanticism. 

manuscripts,  and  Mr.  Clerk  says  that  he  accepted  the 
challenge.  "He  deposited  the  manuscripts  at  his 
publishers',  Beckett  and  De  Hondt,  Strand,  London. 
He  advertised  in  the  newspapers  that  he  had  done  so; 
offered  to  publish  them  if  a  sufficient  number  of  sub- 
scribers came  forward;  and  in  the  Literary  Journal 
of  the  year  1784,  Beckett  certifies  that  the  manu- 
scripts had  lain  in  his  shop  for  the  space  of  a  whole 
year."  * 

But  this  was  more  than  twenty  years  after.  Mr. 
Clerk  does  not  show  that  Johnson  or  Laing  or  Shaw 
or  Pinkerton,  or  any  of  MacPherson's  numerous 
critics,  ever  saw  any  such  advertisement,  or  knew 
where  the  manuscripts  were  to  be  seen;  or  that — 
being  ignorant  of  Gaelic — it  would  have  helped  them 
if  they  had  known;  and  he  admits  that  ''MacPher- 
son's subsequent  conduct,  in  postponing  from  time  to 
time  the  publication,  when  urged  to  it  by  friends  who 
had  liberally  furnished  him  with  means  for  the  pur- 
pose ...  is  indefensible."  In  1773  and  1775,  ^-  S-i 
Dr.  Johnson  was  calling  loudly  for  the  production  of 
the  manuscripts.  "  The  state  of  the  question,"  he 
wrote  to  Boswell,  February  7,  1775,  "  is  this.  He  and 
Dr.  Blair,  whom  I  consider  as  deceived,  say  that  he 
copied  the  poem  from  old  manuscripts.  His  copies, 
if  he  had  them — and  I  believe  him  to  have  none — are 
nothing.  Where  are  the  manuscripts?  They  can  be 
shown  if  they  exist,  but  they  were  never  shown.  De 
non  existentibus  et  non  apparentibus  eadem  est  ratio." 
And  during  his  Scotch  trip  in  1773,  at  a  dinner  at  Sir 
Alexander  Gordon's,  Johnson  said:  "If  the  poems 
were  really  translated,  they  were  certainly  first 
*  "  Dissertation  on  the  Authenticity  of  the  Poems."  See  a«/^,  p.  313. 


Ossian.  321 

written  down.  Let  Mr.  MacPherson  deposit  the 
manuscripts  in  one  of  the  colleges  at  Aberdeen,  where 
there  are  people  who  can  judge;  and  if  the  professors 
certify  their  authenticity,  then  there  will  be  be  an  end 
of  the  controversy.  If  he  does  not  take  this  obvious 
and  easy  method,   he  gives  the  best  reason  to  doubt." 

Indeed  the  subsequent  history  of  these  alleged  manu- 
scripts casts  the  gravest  suspicion  on  MacPherson's 
good  faith.  A  thousand  pounds  were  finally  subscribed 
to  pay  for  the  publication  of  the  Gaelic  texts.  But 
these  MacPherson  never  published.  He  sent  the 
manuscripts  which  were  ultimately  published  in  1807 
to  his  executor,  Mr.  John  Mackenzie;  and  he  left  one 
thousand  pounds  by  his  will  to  defray  the  expense  of 
printing  them.  After  MacPherson's  death  in  1796,  Mr. 
Mackenzie  "delayed  the  publication  from  day  to  day, 
and  at  last  handed  over  the  manuscripts  to  the  Highland 
Society,"*  which  had  them  printed  in  1807,  nearly 
a  half  century  after  the  first  appearance  of  the  Eng- 
lish Ossian.  f  These,  however,  were  not  the  identical 
manuscripts  which  MacPherson  had  found,  or  said  that 
he  had  found,  in  his  tour  of  exploration  through  the 
Highlands.  They  were  all  in  his  own  handwriting  or  in 
that  of  his  amanuenses.  Moreover  the  Rev.  Thomas 
Ross  was  employed  by  the  society  to  transcribe  them 

*  Clerk. 

f  "The  Poems  of  Ossian  in  the  Original  Gaelic,  with  a  Literal 
Translation  into  Latin  by  the  late  Robert  Macfarland,  etc.,  Published 
under  the  Sanction  of  the  Highland  Society  of  London,"  3  vols., 
London,  1807.  The  work  included  dissertations  on  the  authenticity 
of  the  poems  by  Sir  Jno.  Sinclair,  and  the  Abbe  Cesarotti  (trans- 
lated). Four  hundred  and  twenty-three  lines  of  Gaelic,  being  the 
alleged  original  of  the  seventh  book  of  "  Temora,"  had  been  pub- 
lished with  that  epic  in  1763. 


322  eA  History  of  English  l^manticism. 

and  conform  the  spelling  to  that  of  the  Gaelic  Bible, 
which  is  modern.  The  printed  text  of  1807,  there- 
fore, does  not  represent  acurately  even  MacPherson's 
Gaelic.  Whether  the  transcriber  took  any  further 
liberties  than  simply  modernizing  the  spelling  cannot 
be  known,  for  the  same  mysterious  fate  that  overtook 
MacPherson's  original  collections  followed  his  own 
manuscript.  This,  after  being  at  one  time  in  the 
Advocates'  Library,  has  now  utterly  disappeared. 
Mr.  Campbell  thinks  that  under  this  double  process 
of  distillation — a  copy  by  MacPherson  and  then  a 
copy  by  Ross — "  the  ancient  form  of  the  language, 
if  it  was  ancient,  could  hardly  survive."*  "What 
would  become  of  Chaucer,"  he  asks,  "so  maltreated 
and  finally  spelt  according  to  modern  rules  of 
grammar  and  orthography?  I  have  found  by  experi- 
ence that  an  alteration  in  *  spelling '  may  mean  an 
entire  change  of  construction  and  meaning,  and  a  sub- 
stitution of  whole  words." 

But  the  Gaelic  text  of  1807  was  attacked  in  more 
vital  points  than  its  spelling.  It  was  freely  charged 
with  being  an  out-and-out  fabrication,  a  translation 
of  MacPherson's  English  prose  into  modern  Gaelic. 
This  question  is  one  which  must  be  settled  by  Gaelic 
scholars,  and  these  still  disagree.  In  1862  Mr.  Camp- 
bell wrote :  "  When  the  Gaelic  '  Fingal,'  published  in 
1807,  is  compared  with  any  one  of  the  translations 
which  purport  to  have  been  made  from  it,  it  seems  to 
me  incomparably  superior.  It  is  far  simpler  in  diction. 
It  has  a  peculiar  rhythm  and  assonance  which  seem  to 
repel  the  notion  of  a  mere  translation  from  English, 

*  "  Popular  Tales  of  the  West  Highlands,"  J.  F.  Campbell, 
Edinburgh,  1862.     Vol.  IV.  p.  156. 


Ossian.  323 

as  something  almost  absurd.  It  is  impossible  that  it 
can  be  a  translation  from  MacPherson's  English,  un- 
less there  was  some  clever  Gaelic  poet  *  then  alive, 
able  and  willing  to  write  what  Eton  schoolboys  call 
'full-sense  verses.'"  The  general  testimony  is  that 
MacPherson's  own  knowledge  of  Gaelic  was  imper- 
fect. Mr,  Campbell's  summary  of  the  whole  matter — 
in  1862 — is  as  follows:  "My  theory  then  is,  that 
about  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  or  the 
end  of  the  seventeenth,  or  earlier.  Highland  bards 
may  have  fused  floating  popular  traditions  into  more 
complete  forms,  engrafting  their  own  ideas  on  what 
they  found;  and  that  MacPherson  found  their  works, 
translated  and  altered  them;  published  the  translation 
in  1760;  f  made  the  Gaelic  ready  for  the  press;  pub- 
lished some  of  it  in  1763,  J  and  made  away  with  the 
evidence  of  what  he  had  done,  when  he  found  that  his 
conduct  was  blamed.  I  can  see  no  other  way  out  of 
the  maze  of  testimony."  But  by  1872  Mr.  Campbell 
had  come  to  a  conclusion  much  less  favorable  to  the 
claims  of  the  Gaelic  text.  He  now  considers  that  the 
English  was  first  composed  by  MacPherson  and  that 
"he  and  other  translators  afterward  worked  at  it  and 
made  a  Gaelic  equivalent  whose  merit  varies  accord- 
ing to  the  translator's  skill  and  knowledge  of  Gaelic."  § 
On  the  other  hand,  two  of  the  foremost  authorities 
in  Gaelic,  Mr.  W.  F.  Skene  and  Mr.  Archibald  Clerk, 
are  confident  that  the  Gaelic  is  the  original  and  the 

*  He  suggests  Lachlan  MacPherson  of  Strathmashie,  one  of  Mac- 
Pherson's helpers.     "  Popular  Tales  of  the  West  Highlands." 
f  "  Fragments,"  etc. 

X  Seventh  book  of  "  Temora."     See  ante,  p.  321. 
§  "  Leabhar  Na  Feinne,"  p.  xii. 


324  <i/l  History  of  English  '^manticism. 

English  the  translation.  Mr.  Clerk,  who  reprinted 
the  Highland  Society's  text  in  1870,*  with  a  literal 
translation  of  his  own  on  alternate  pages  and  Mac- 
Pherson's  English  at  the  foot  of  the  page,  believes 
implicitly  in  the  antiquity  and  genuineness  of  the 
Gaelic  originals.  "  MacPherson,"  he  writes,  "got 
much  from  manuscripts  and  much  from  oral  recita- 
tion. It  is  most  probable  that  he  has  given  the  minor 
poems  exactly  as  he  found  them.  He  may  have  made 
considerable  changes  in  the  larger  ones  in  giving 
them  their  present  form;  although  I  do  not  believe 
that  he,  or  any  of  his  assistants,  added  much  even 
in  the  way  of  connecting  links  between  the  various 
episodes." 

To  a  reader  unacquainted  with  Gaelic,  comparing 
MacPherson's  English  with  Mr.  Clerk's,  it  certainly 
looks  unlikely  that  the  Gaelic  can  be  merely  a  trans- 
lation from  the  former.  The  reflection  in  a  mirror 
cannot  be  more  distinct  than  the  object  it  reflects ;  and 
if  Mr.  Clerk's  version  can  be  trusted  (it  appears  to  be 
more  literal  though  less  rhetorical  than  MacPherson's) 
the  Gaelic  is  often  concrete  and  sharp  where  Mac- 
Pherson  is  general;  often  plain  where  he  is  figura- 
tive or  ornate;  and  sometimes  of  a  meaning  quite 
different  from  his  rendering.  Take,  e.  g.,  the  clos- 
ing passage  of  the  second  "Duan,"  or  book,  of 
'*Fingal." 

**An  arrow  found  his  manly  breast.  He  sleeps 
with  his  loved  Galbina  at  the  noise  of  the  sounding 
surge.  Their  green  tombs  are  seen  by  the  mariner, 
when  he  bounds  on  the  waves  of  the  north." — 
MacPherson. 

*  See  ante,  p.  313,  note. 


Ossian.  325 

"  A  ruthless  arrow  found  his  breast. 
His  sleep  is  by  thy  side,  Galbina, 
Where  wrestles  the  wind  with  ocean. 
The  sailor  sees  their  graves  as  one, 
When  rising  on  the  ridge  of  the  waves." 

—Clerk. 

But  again  Mr.  Archibald  Sinclair,  a  Glasgow  pub- 
lisher, a  letter  from  whom  is  given  by  Mr.  Campbell 
in  his  "Tales  of  the  West  Highlands,"  has  "no  hesi- 
tation in  affirming  that  a  considerable  portion  of  the 
Gaelic  which  is  published  as  the  original  of  his 
[MacPherson's]  translation,  is  actually  translated 
back  from  the  English."  And  Professor  Sullivan 
says:  "The  so-called  originals  are  a  very  curious 
kind  of  mosaic,  constructed  evidently  with  great  labor 
afterward,  in  which  sentences  or  parts  of  sentences  of 
genuine  poems  are  cemented  together  in  a  very  inferior 
word-paste  of  MacPherson's  own."  * 

It  is  of  course  no  longer  possible  to  maintain  what 
Mr.  Campbell  says  is  the  commonest  English  opinion, 
viz.,  that  MacPherson  invented  the  characters  and 
incidents  of  his  "Ossian,"  and  that  the  poems  had  no 
previous  existence  in  any  shape.  The  evidence  is 
overwhelming  that  there  existed,  both  in  Ireland  and 
the  Scottish  Highlands  traditions,  tales,  and  poems 
popularly  attributed  to  Oisin,  the  son  of  Finn  Mac- 
Cumhail.  But  no  poem  has  been  found  which  corre- 
sponds exactly  to  any  single  piece  in  MacPherson ;  and 
Sullivan  cites,  as  one  proof  of  the  modern  and  spurious 
character  of  these  versions,  the  fact  that  they  mingle 
names  from  the  ancient  hero-cycle,  like  Darthula, 
CuthuUin,  and    Conlach,  with    names    belonging    to 


*  >' 


Encylopoedia  Britannica"  :  "Celtic  Literature." 


326  A  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

the  Finnian  cycle,  as  is  never  the  case  in  the 
authentic  and  undoubted  remains  of  Celtic  poetry. 
Between  1760,  the  date  of  MacPherson's  "Frag- 
ments," and  1807,  the  date  of  the  Highland  Society's 
text,  there  had  been  published  independently  nine 
hundred  lines  of  Ossianic  verse  in  Gaelic  in  Gillie's 
collection,  1786,  and  Stewart's,  1804.  In  1780  Dr. 
Smith  had  published  his  "Ancient  Lays,"  a  free 
translation  from  Gaelic  fragments,  which  he  subse- 
quently printed  (1787)  under  the  title  "Sean  Dana," 
Smith  frankly  took  liberties  with  his  originals,  such 
as  we  may  suppose  that  MacPherson  took  with  his; 
but  he  made  no  secret  of  this  and,  by  giving  the 
Gaelic  on  which  his  paraphrase  rested,  he  enabled  the 
public  to  see  how  far  his  "  Ancient  Lays,"  were  really 
ancient,  and  how  far  they  were  built  up  into  poetic 
wholes  by  his  own  editorial  labors.* 

Wordsworth's  assertion  of  the  failure  of  Mac- 
Pherson's "  Ossian  "  to  "amalgamate  with  the  liter- 
ature of  the  island  "  needs  some  qualification.  That 
it  did  not  enter  into  English  literature  in  a  formative 
way,  as  Percy's  ballads  did,  is  true  enough,  and  is 
easy  of  explanation.  In  the  first  place,  it  was  pro- 
fessedly a  prose  translation  from  poetry  in  another 
tongue,  and  could  hardly,  therefore,  influence  the 
verse  and  diction  of  English  poetry  directly.  It  could 
not  even  work  upon  them  as  directly  as  many  foreign 
literatures  have  worked;  as  the  ancient  classical 
literatures,  e.  g.,   have  always  worked;  or  as  Italian 

*For  a  further  account  of  the  state  of  the  "authenticity"  ques- 
tion, see  Archibald  McNeil's  "  Notes  on  the  Authenticity  of  Ossian's 
Poems,"  1868;  and  an  article  on  "  Ossian "  in  Macmillaiis 
Magazine,  XXIV.  1 13-25. 


Ossian.  327 

and  French  and  German  have  at  various  times  worked ; 
for  the  Gaelic  was  practically  inaccessible  to  all  but 
a  few  special  scholars.  Whatever  its  beauty  or 
expressiveness,  it  was  in  worse  case  than  a  dead 
language,  for  it  was  marked  with  the  stigma  of 
barbarism.  In  its  palmiest  days  it  had  never  been 
what  the  Germans  call  a  Kultursprache ;  and  now  it 
was  the  idiom  of  a  few  thousand  peasants  and  moun- 
taineers, and  was  rapidly  becoming  extinct  even  in  its 
native  fastnesses. 

Whatever  effect  was  to  be  wrought  by  the  Ossianic 
poems  upon  the  English  mind,  was  to  be  wrought  in 
the  dress  which  MacPherson  had  given  them.  And 
perhaps,  after  all,  the  tumid  and  rhetorical  cast  of 
MacPherson's  prose  had  a  great  deal  to  do  with 
producing  the  extraordinary  enthusiasm  with  which 
his  ''wild  paraphrases,"  as  Mr.  Campbell  calls  them, 
were  received  by  the  public.  The  age  was  tired  of 
polish,  of  wit,  of  over-civilization;  it  was  groping 
toward  the  rude,  the  primitive,  the  heroic;  had  begun 
to  steep  itself  in  melancholy  sentiment  and  to  feel  a 
dawning  admiration  of  mountain  solitudes  and  the 
hoary  past.  Suddenly  here  was  what  it  had  been 
waiting  for — "a  tale  of  the  times  of  old";  and  the 
solemn,  dirge-like  chant  of  MacPherson's  sentences, 
with  the  peculiar  manner  of  his  narrative,  its  repeti- 
tions, its  want  of  transitions,  suited  well  with  his 
matter.  "  Men  haS  been  talking  under  their  breath, 
and  in  a  mincing  dialect  so  long,"  says  Leslie  Stephen, 
'♦that  they  were  easily  gratified  and  easily  imposed 
upon  by  an  affectation  of  vigorous  and  natural 
sentiment." 

The   impression  was  temporary,  but   it  was  imme- 


328  A  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

diate  and  powerful.  Wordsworth  was  wrong  when  he 
said  that  no  author  of  distinction  except  Chatterton 
had  ventured  formally  to  imitate  Ossian.  A  genera- 
tion after  the  appearance  of  the  "  Fragments  "  we  find 
the  youthful  Coleridge  alluding  to  **  Ossian"  in  the 
preface*  to  his  first  collection  of  poems  (1793),  which 
contains  two  verse  imitations  of  the  same,  as  ecce 
signum  : 

"  How  long  will  ye  round  me  be  swelling, 
O  ye  blue-tumbling  waves  of  the  sea  ? 
Not  always  in  caves  was  my  dwelling, 

Nor  beneath  the  cold  blast  of  the  tree,"  etc.,  etc.  f 

In  Byron's  "Hours  of  Idleness"  (1807),  published 
when  he  was  a  Cambridge  undergraduate,  is  a  piece  of 
prose  founded  on  the  episode  of  Nisus  and  Euryalus 
in  the  "^neid"  and  entitled  "The  Death  of  Calmar 
and  Orla — An  Imitation  of  MacPherson's  Ossian." 
*'  What  form  rises  on  the  roar  of  clouds?  Whose  dark 
ghost  gleams  in  the  red  stream  of  tempests?  His 
voice  rolls  on  the  thunder.  'Tis  Orla,  the  brown  chief 
of  Orthona  .  .  .  Lovely  wast  thou,  son  of  blue-eyed 
Morla,"  etc.  After  reading  several  pages  of  such 
stuff,  one  comes  to  feel  that  Byron  could  do  this  sort 
of  thing  about  as  well  as  MacPherson  himself;  and 
indeed,  that  Johnson  was  not  so  very  far  wrong  when 
he  said  that  anyone  could  do  it  if  he  would  abandon 
his  mind  to  it.  Chatterton  applied  the  Ossianic  ver- 
biage in  a  number  of  pieces  which  he  pretended  to 
have  translated  from  the  Saxon:    "Ethelgar,"    "  Ken- 

*  "  The  sweet  voice  of  Cona  never  sounds  so  sweetly  as  when  it 
speaks  of  itself." 

t  "  The  Complaint  of  Ninathoma." 


Ossian.  329 

rick,"  "Cerdick,"  and  "  Gorthmund";  as  well  as  in  a 
composition  which  he  called  "  Godred  Crovan,"  from 
the  Manx  dialect,  and  one  from  the  ancient  British, 
which  he  entitled  "The  Heilas. "  He  did  not  catch 
the  trick  quite  so  successfully  as  Byron,  as  a  passage 
or  two  from  "Kenrick"  will  show:  "Awake,  son  of 
Eldulph!  Thou  that  sleepest  on  the  white  mountain, 
with  the  fairest  of  women;  no  more  pursue  the  dark 
brown  wolf:  arise  from  the  mossy  bank  of  the  falling 
waters:  let  thy  garments  be  stained  in  blood,  and  the 
streams  of  life  discolor  thy  girdle  .  .  .  Cealwulf  of  the 
high  mountain,  who  viewed  the  first  rays  of  the  morn- 
ing star,  swift  as  the  flying  deer,  strong  as  a  young  oak, 
fiery  as  an  evening  wolf,  drew  his  sword;  glittering 
like  the  blue  vapors  in  the  valley  of  Horso:  terrible 
as  the  red  lightning  bursting  from  the  dark-brown 
clouds,  his  swift  bark  rode  over  the  foaming  waves 
like  the  wind  in  the  tempest." 

In  a  note  on  his  Ossianic  imitation,  Byron  said  that 
Mr.  Laing  had  proved  Ossian  an  impostor,  but  that 
the  merit  of  MacPherson's  work  remained,  although 
in  parts  his  diction  was  turgid  and  bombastic*  A 
poem  in  the  "Hours  of  Idleness,"  upon  the  Scotch 
mountain  "  Lachin  Y  Gair,"  has  two  Ossianic  lines  in 
quotation  points — 

"  Shades  of  the  dead!  have  I  not  heard  your  voices 
Rise  on  the  night-rolling  breath  of  the  gale  ?" 

Byron  attributed  much  importance  to  his  early  recol- 
lections of  Highland  scenery,  which  he  said  had  pre- 
pared   him    to    love    the    Alps    and    "blue    Friuli's 

*  For  some  MS.  notes  of  Byron  in  a  copy  of  "  Ossian,"  see  Phelps' 
"  English  Romantic  Movement,"  pp.  153-54. 


33*^  A  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

mountains,"  and  "the  Acroceraunian  mountains  of 
old  name."  But  the  influence  of  Ossian  upon  Byron 
and  his  older  contemporaries  was  manifested  in  subtler 
ways  than  in  formal  imitations.  It  fell  in  with  that 
current  of  feeling  which  Carlyle  called  "  Wertherism," 
and  helped  to  swell  it.  It  chimed  with  the  tone 
that  sounds  through  the  German  Sturm  imd  Drang 
period;  that  impatience  of  restraint,  that  longing  to 
give  full  swing  to  the  claims  of  the  elementary  pas- 
sions, and  that  desperation  when  these  are  checked  by 
the  arrangements  of  modern  society,  which  we  encoun- 
ter in  Rousseau  and  the  young  Goethe.  Hence  the 
romantic  gloom,  the  Byronic  Zerrissenheit,  to  use 
Heine's  word,  which  drove  the  poet  from  the  rubs  of 
social  life  to  waste  places  of  nature  and  sometimes  to 
suicide.  In  such  a  mood  the  mind  recurred  to  the 
language  of  Ossian,  as  the  fit  expression  of  its  own  in- 
definite and  stormy  griefs. 

''Homer,"  writes  Werther, "  has  been  superseded  in 
my  heart  by  the  divine  Ossian.  Through  what  a  world 
does  this  angelic  bard  carry  me!  With  him  I  wander 
over  barren  wastes  and  frightful  wilds;  surrounded  by 
whirlwinds  and  hurricanes,  trace  by  the  feeble  light  of 
the  moon  the  shades  of  our  noble  ancestors;  hear  from 
the  mountainous  heights,  intermingled  with  the  roar- 
ing of  waves  and  cataracts,  their  plaintive  tones  steal- 
ing from  cavernous  recesses;  while  the  pensive 
monody  of  some  love-stricken  maiden,  who  heaves 
her  departing  sighs  over  the  moss-clad  grave  of  the 
warrior  by  whom  she  was  adored,  makes  up  the  inar- 
ticulate concert.  I  trace  this  bard,  with  his  silver 
locks,  as  he  wanders  in  the  valley  and  explores  the 
footsteps  of  his  fathers.     Alas!   no    vestige    remains 


Ossian.  33 1 

but  their  tombs.  His  thought  then  hangs  on  the 
silver  moon,  as  her  sinking  beams  play  upon  the  rip- 
pling main;  and  the  remembrance  of  deeds  past  and 
gone  recurs  to  the  hero's  mind — deeds  of  times  when 
he  gloried  in  the  approach  of  danger,  and  emulation 
nerved  his  whole  frame;  when  the  pale  orb  shone  upon 
his  bark,  laden  with  the  spoils  of  his  enemy,  and  illu- 
minated his  triumphant  return.  When  I  see  depicted 
on  his  countenance  a  bosom  full  of  woe;  when  I  be- 
hold his  heroic  greatness  sinking  into  the  grave,  and 
he  exclaims,  as  he  throws  a  glance  at  the  cold  sod 
which  is  to  lie  upon  him:  '  Hither  will  the  traveler 
who  is  sensible  of  my  worth  bend  his  weary  steps,  and 
seek  the  soul-enlivening  bard,  the  illustrious  son  of 
Fingal;  his  foot  will  tread  upon  my  tomb,  but  his  eyes 
shall  never  behold  me';  at  this  time  it  is,  my  dear 
friend,  that,  like  some  renowned  and  chivalrous 
knight,  I  could  instantly  draw  my  sword;  rescue  my 
prince  from  a  long,  irksome  existence  of  languor  and 
pain;  and  then  finish  by  plunging  the  weapon  into  my 
own  breast,  that  I  might  accompany  the  demi-god 
whom  my  hand  had  emancipated."  * 

In  his  last  interview  with  Charlotte,  Werther,  who 
had  already  determined  upon  suicide,  reads  aloud  to 
her,  from  "The  Songs  of  Selma,"  "that  tender  pas- 
sage wherein  Armin  deplores  the  loss  of  his  beloved 
daughter.  'Alone  on  the  sea-beat  rocks,  my  daughter 
was  heard  to  complain.  Frequent  and  loud  were  her 
cries.  What  could  her  father  do?  All  night  I  stood 
on  the  shore.  I  saw  her  by  the  faint  beam  of  the 
moon,'  "  etc.  The  reading  is  interrupted  by  a  mutual 
flood  of  tears.  "They  traced  the  similitude  of  their 
*  "  Sorrows  of  Werther,"  Letter  Ixviii. 


332  A  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

own  misfortune  in  this  unhappy  tale.  .  .  The  pointed 
allusion  of  those  words  to  the  situation  of  Werther 
rushed  with  all  the  electric  rapidity  of  lightning  to  the 
inmost  recesses  of  his  soul." 

It  is  significant  that  one  of  Ossian's  most  fervent 
admirers  was  Chateaubriand,  who  has  been  called  the 
inventor  of  modern  melancholy  and  of  the  primeval 
forest.  Here  is  a  passage  from  his  **  Genie  du 
Christianisme  ":  *  "  Under  a  cloudy  sky,  on  the  coast 
of  that  sea  whose  tempests  were  sung  by  Ossian,  their 
Gothic  architecture  has  something  grand  and  somber. 
Seated  on  a  shattered  altar  in  the  Orkneys,  the  traveler 
is  astonished  at  the  dreariness  of  those  places:  sudden 
fogs,  vales  where  rises  the  sepulchral  stone,  streams 
flowing  through  wild  heaths,  a  few  reddish  pine  trees, 
scattered  over  a  naked  desert  studded  with  patches  of 
snow;  such  are  the  only  objects  which  present  them- 
selves to  his  view.  The  wind  circulates  among  the 
ruins,  and  their  innumerable  crevices  become  so  many 
tubes,  which  heave  a  thousand  sighs.  Long  grasses 
wave  in  the  apertures  of  the  domes,  and  beyond  these 
apertures  you  behold  the  flitting  clouds  and  the  soar- 
ing sea-eagle.  .  .  Long  will  those  four  stones  which 
mark  the  tombs  of  heroes  on  the  moors  of  Caledonia, 
long  will  they  continue  to  attract  the  contemplative 
traveler.  Oscar  and  Malvina  are  gone,  but  nothing  is 
changed  in  their  solitary  country.  'Tis  no  longer  the 
hand  of  the  bard  himself  that  sweeps  the  harp;  the 
tones  we  hear  are  the  slight  trembling  of  the  strings, 
produced  by  the  touch  of  a  spirit,  when  announcing  at 
night,  in  a  lonely  chamber,  the  death  of  a  hero.  .  . 
So  when  he  sits  in  the  silence  of  noon  in  the  valley  of 

*  "Caledonia,  or  Ancient  Scotland," book  ii.  chapter  vii.  paitiv. 


Ossian.  333 

his  breezes  is  the  murmur  of  the  mountain  to  Ossian's 
ear:  the  gale  drowns  it  often  in  its  course,  but  the 
pleasant  sound  returns  again." 

In  Byron's  passion  for  night  and  tempest,  for  the 
wilderness,  the  mountains,  and  the  sea,  it  is  of  course 
impossible  to  say  how  large  a  share  is  attributable 
directly  to  MacPherson's  "Ossian,"  or  more  remotely, 
through  Chateaubriand  and  other  inheritors  of  the 
Ossianic  mood.  The  influence  of  any  particular  book 
becomes  dispersed  and  blended  with  a  hundred  cur- 
rents that  are  in  the  air.  But  I  think  one  has  often  a 
consciousness  of  Ossian  in  reading  such  passages 
as  the  famous  apostrophe  to  the  ocean  in  **Childe 
Harold  "— 

"  Roll  on,  thou  deep  and  dark  blue  ocean,  roll  ! " — 

which  recalls  the  address  to  the  sun  in  Carthon — **0 
thou  that  rollest  above,  round  as  the  shield  of  my 
fathers," — perhaps  the  most  hackneyed  locus  classicus 
in  the  entire  work;  or  as  the  lines  beginning, 

"  O  that  the  desert  were  my  dwelling  place  ;  "* 

or  the  description  of  the  storm  in  the  Jura: 

"  And  this  is  in  the  night  :  Most  glorious  night  I 
Thou  wert  not  sent  for  slumber.     Let  me  be 
A  sharer  in  thy  fierce  and  far  delight 
A  portion  of  the  tempest  and  of  thee."  * 

Walter  Scott,  while  yet  a  lad,  made  acquaintance 
with  Ossian  through  Dr.  Blacklock,  and  was  at 
first  delighted;  but  "the  tawdry  repetitions  of  the 
Ossianic  phraseology,"  he  confesses,   "disgusted  me 


*  w 


Childe  Harold,"  canto  iii. 


334  ^  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

rather  sooner  than  might  have  been  expected  from  my 
age."  He  afterward  contributed  an  essay  on  the 
authenticity  of  the  poems  to  the  proceedings  of  the 
Speculative  Club  of  Edinburgh.  In  one  sense  of  the 
word  Scott  was  the  most  romantic  of  romanticists; 
but  in  another  sense  he  was  very  little  romantic,  and 
there  was  not  much  in  his  sane,  cheerful,  and  robust  na- 
ture upon  which  such  poetry  as  Ossian  could  fasten.* 
It  is  just  at  this  point,  indeed,  that  definitions  diverge 
and  the  two  streams  of  romantic  tendency  part 
company.  These  Carlyle  has  called  "  Wertherism  " 
and  "Gotzism":f  /*.  e.,  sentimentalism  and  mediseval- 
ism,  though  so  mild  a  word  as  sentimentalism  fails  to 
express  adequately  the  morbid  despair  to  which 
"  Werther  "  gave  utterance,  and  has  associations  with 
works  of  a  very  different  kind,  such  as  the  fictions  of 
Richardson  and  Sterne.  In  England,  Scott  became 
the  foremost  representative  of  "  Gotzism,"  and  Byron 
of  "Wertherism."  The  pessimistic,  sardonic  heroes 
of  "Manfred,"  "Childe  Harold,"  and  "The  Corsair" 
were  the  latest  results  of  the  "  II  Penseroso  "  literature, 
and  their  melodramatic  excesses  already  foretokened 
a  reaction. 

Among  other  testimonies  to  Ossian's  popularity  in 
England  are  the  numerous  experiments  at  versify- 
ing MacPherson's  prose.  These  were  not  over- 
sucessful  and  only  a  few  of  them  require  mention 
here.     The  Rev.    John    Wodrow,  a   Scotch  minister, 

*  The  same  is  true  of  Burns,  though  references  to  Cuthullin's  dog 
I  Luath,  in  ' '  The  Twa  Dogs  "  ;  to  "  Caric-thura  "  in  "  The  Whistle  "  ; 
land  to  "  Cath-Loda  "  in   the  notes  on  "The  Vision,"  show   that 
Burns  knew  his  Ossian. 

f  From  Goethe's  "  Gotz  von  Berlichingen." 


Osst'an.  335 

"  attempted"  "  Carthon,"  "  The  Death  of  Cuthullin  " 
and  <'Darthula"  in  heroic  conplets,  in  1769;  and 
"Fingal  "  in  1771.  In  the  preface  to  his  '' Fingal," 
he  maintained  that  there  was  no  reasonable  doubt 
of  the  antiquity  and  authenticity  of  MacPherson's 
"  Ossian."  "  Fingal  " — which  seems  to  have  been  the 
favorite — was  again  turned  into  heroic  couplets  by 
Ewen  Cameron,  in  1776,  prefaced  by  the  attestations  of 
a  number  of  Highland  gentlemen  to  the  genuineness 
of  the  originals;  and  by  an  argumentative  introduc- 
tion, in  which  the  author  quotes  Dr.  Blair's  dictum 
that  Ossian  was  the  equal  of  Homer  and  Vergil  "in 
strength  of  imagination,  in  grandeur  of  sentiment,  and 
in  native  majesty  of  passion."  National  pride  enlisted 
most  of  the  Scotch  scholars  on  the  aiifirmative  side  of 
the  question,  and  made  the  authenticity  of  Ossian 
almost  an  article  of  belief.  Wodrow's  heroics  were 
merely  respectable.  The  quality  of  Cameron's  may  be 
guessed  from  a  half  dozen  lines: 

"  When  Moran,  one  commissioned  to  explore 
The  distant  seas,  came  running  from  the  shore 
And  thus  exclaimed — '  Cuthullin,  rise  !     The  ships 
Of  snowy  Lochlin  hide  the  rolling  deeps. 
Innumerable  foes  the  land  invade, 
And  Swaran  seems  determined  to  succeed.'" 

Whatever  impressiveness  belonged  to  MacPherson's 
cadenced  prose  was  lost  in  these  metrical  versions, 
which  furnish  a  perfect  reductio  ad  absurdiim  of  the 
critical  folly  that  compared  Ossian  with  Homer. 
Homer  could  not  be  put  in  any  dress  through  which 
the  beauty  and  interest  of  the  original  would  not 
appear.     Still  again,  in  1786,  ''Fingal"  was  done  into 


33^  A  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

heroics  by  a  Mr.  R.  Hole,  who  varied  his  measures 
with  occasional  ballad  stanzas,  thus: 

"  But  many  a  fair  shall  melt  with  woe 
At  thy  soft  strain  in  future  days, 
And  many  a  manly  bosom  glow, 
Congenial  to  thy  lofty  lays," 

These  versions  were  all  emitted  in  Scotland.  But  as 
late  as  1814  "  Fingal  "  appeared  once  more  in  verse, 
this  time  in  London,  and  in  a  variety  of  meters  by  Mr. 
George  Harvey;  who,  in  his  preface,  expressed  the 
hope  that  Walter  Scott  would  feel  moved  to  cast 
"  Ossian  "  into  the  form  of  a  metrical  romance,  like 
"Marmion"  or  "The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel." 
The  best  English  poem  constructed  from  MacPherson 
is  "The  Six  Bards  of  Ossian  Versified,"  by  Sir  Eger- 
ton  Brydges  (dated  in  1784).*  The  passage  selected 
was  the  one  which  Gray  so  greatly  admired,  f  from  a 
note  to  "  Croma,"  in  the  original  "Fragments."  Six 
bards  who  have  met  at  the  hall  of  a  chieftain,  on  an 
October  night,  go  out  one  after  another  to  observe  the 
weather,  and  return  to  report  their  observations,  each 
ending  with  the  refrain  "Receive  me  from  the  night, 
my  friends."  The  whole  episode  is  singularly  arrest- 
ing, and  carries  a  conviction  of  reality  too  often  want- 
ing in  the  epic  portions  of  MacPherson's  collection. 

Walpole,  at  first,  was  nearly  as  much  charmed  by 
the  "  Fragments  "  as  Gray  had  been.  He  wrote  to 
Dalrymple  that  they  were  real  poetry,  natural  poetry, 
like  the  poetry  of  the  East.     He  liked  particularly  the 

*  See  "  Poems  by  Saml.  Egerton  Brydges,"  4th  ed. ,  London,  1807. 
pp.  87-96. 

f  See  ante,  p.  117. 


Ossian.  337 

synonym  for  an  echo — "son  of  the  rock";  and  in  a 
later  letter  he  said  that  all  doubts  which  he  might 
once  have  entertained  as  to  their  genuineness  had  dis- 
appeared. But  Walpole's  literary  judgments  were 
notoriously  capricious.  In  his  subsequent  correspond- 
ence with  Mason  and  others,  he  became  very  con- 
temptuous of  MacPherson's  "cold  skeleton  of  an 
epic  poem,  that  is  more  insipid  than  'Leonidas.'" 
"Ossian,"  he  tells  Mason,  in  a  letter  dated  March, 
1783,  has  become  quite  incredible  to  him;  but  Mrs, 
Montagu — the  founder  of  the  Blue  Stocking  Club — 
still  "  holds  her  feast  of  shells  in  her  feather  dressing- 
room." 

The  Celtic  Homer  met  with  an  even  warmer  wel- 
come abroad  than  at  home.  He  was  rendered  into 
French,*  German,  Italian,  Spanish,  Dutch,  Polish,  and 
possibly  other  languages.  Bonaparte  was  a  great 
lover  of  Ossian,  and  carried  about  with  him  a  copy  of 
Cesarotti's  Italian  version.  A  resemblance  has  been 
fancied  between  MacPherson's  manner  and  the  gran- 
diloquent style  of  Bonaparte's  bulletins  and  dis- 
patches, f  In  Germany  Ossian  naturally  took  most 
strongly.  He  was  translated  into  hexameters  by  a 
Vienna  Jesuit  named  Michael  Denis  J  and  produced 
many  imitations.  Herder  gave  three  translations 
from  "Ossian"  in  his  "  Stimmen  der  Volker  "  (1778- 
79)   and    prefixed    to    the    whole   collection   an   essay 

*  There  were  French  translations  by  Letourneur  in  1777  and  1810  : 
by  Lacaussade  in  1842  ;  and  an  imitation  by  Baour-Lormian  in 
l8oi. 

f  See  Perry's  "  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,"  p.  417. 

X  One  suspects  this  translator  to  have  been  of  Irish  descent.  He 
was  born  at  Scharding,  Bavaria,  in  1729. 


338  A  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

**Ueber  Ossian  und  die  Lieder  alter  Volker"  written 
in  1773.  Schiller  was  one  of  the  converts;  Klopstock 
and  his  circle  called  themselves  ''bards";  and  an 
exclamatory  and  violent  mannerism  came  into  vogue, 
known  in  German  literary  history  as  Bardengebriill. 
MacPherson's  personal  history  need  not  be  followed 
here  in  detail.  In  1764  he  went  to  Pensacola  as  sec- 
retary to  Governor  Johnston.  He  was  afterward  a 
government  pamphleteer,  writing  against  Junius  and 
in  favor  of  taxing  the  American  colonies.  He  was 
appointed  agent  to  the  Nabob  of  Arcot;  sat  in  Parlia- 
ment for  the  borough  of  Camelford,  and  built  a  hand- 
some Italian  villa  in  his  native  parish;  died  in  1796, 
leaving  a  large  fortune,  and  was  buried  in  Westminster 
Abbey.  In  1773  he  was  ill-advised  enough  to  render 
the  "Iliad"  into  Ossianic  prose.  The  translation  was 
overwhelmed  with  ridicule,  and  probably  did  much  to 
increase  the  growing  disbelief  in  the  genuineness  of 
"Fingal"  and  "Temora." 


CHAPTER    X. 

ttbomas  Cbatterton. 

The  history  of  English  romanticism  has  its  tragedy: 
the  life  and  death  of  Thomas  Chatterton — 

"  The  marvelous  boy, 
The  sleepless  soul  that  perished  in  his  pride,"  * 

The  story  has  been  often  told,  but  it  may  be  told 
again  here;  for,  aside  from  its  dramatic  interest,  and 
leaving  out  of  question  the  absolute  value  of  the 
Rowley  poems,  it  is  most  instructive  as  to  the  con- 
ditions which  brought  about  the  romantic  revival. 
It  shows  by  what  process  antiquarianism  became 
poetry. 

The  scene  of  the  story  was  the  ancient  city  of 
Bristol — old  Saxon  Bricgestowe,  "  place  of  the 
bridge  " — bridge,  namely,  over  the  Avon  stream,  not 
far  above  its  confluence  with  the  Severn.  Here  Chat- 
terton was  born  in  1752,  the  posthumous  son  of  a  dis- 
sipated schoolmaster,  whose  ancestors  for  a  hundred 
and  fifty  years  had  been,  in  unbroken  succession,  sex- 
tons to  the  church  of  St.  Mary  Redcliffe.  Perhaps  it 
may  be  more  than  an  idle  fancy  to  attribute  to  hered- 
ity the  bent  which  Chatterton's  genius  took  sponta- 
neously and  almost  from  infancy;  to  guess  that  some 
mysterious  ante-natal  influence — ''striking  the  electric 

*  Wordsworth,  "  Resolution  and  Independence." 

339 


34°  A  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

chain  wherewith  we  are  darkly  bound  " — may  have  set 
vibrating  links  of  unconscious  association  running 
back  through  the  centuries.  Be  this  as  it  may,  Chat- 
terton  was  the  child  of  Redcliffe  Church.  St.  Mary 
stood  by  his  cradle  and  rocked  it;  and  if  he  did  not 
inherit  with  his  blood,  or  draw  in  with  his  mother's 
milk  a  veneration  for  her  ancient  pile;  at  least  the 
waters  of  her  baptismal  font*  seemed  to  have  signed 
him  with  the  token  of  her  service.  Just  as  truly  as 
"  The  Castle  of  Otranto  "  was  sprung  from  Strawberry 
Hill,  the  Rowley  poems  were  born  of  St.  Mary's 
Church. 

Chatterton's  father  had  not  succeeded  to  the  sexton- 
ship,  but  he  was  a  sub-chanter  in  Bristol  Cathedral, 
and  his  house  and  school  in  Pile  Street  were  only  a 
few  yards  from  Redcliffe  Church.  In  this  house 
Chatterton  was  born,  under  the  eaves  almost  of  the 
sanctuary;  and  when  his  mother  removed  soon  after 
to  another  house,  where  she  maintained  herself  by 
keeping  a  little  dame's  school  and  doing  needle  work, 
it  was  still  on  Redcliffe  Hill  and  in  close  neighbor- 
hood to  St.  Mary's.  The  church  itself — "the  pride 
of  Bristowe  and  the  western  land  " — is  described  as 
''one  of  the  finest  parish  churches  in  England,"  f 
a  rich  specimen  of  late  Gothic  or  "decorated  "  style; 
its  building  or  restoration  dating  from  the  middle  of 
the  fifteenth  century.  Chatterton's  uncle  by  marriage, 
Richard  Phillips,  had  become  sexton  in  1748,  and  the 
boy   had    the    run  of   the  aisles  and  transepts.     The 

*January  i,  1753. 

f  "  The  Poetical  Works  of  Thos.  Chatterton.  With  an  Essay  on 
the  Rowley  Poems  by  the  Rev.  Walter  W.  Skeat  and  a  Memoir  by 
Edward  Bell";  in  two  volumes.     London,  1871,  Vol,  I.  p.  xv. 


Thomas  Chatterton.  341 

stone  effigies  of  knights,  priests,  magistrates,  and 
other  ancient  civic  worthies  stirred  into  life  under  his 
intense  and  brooding  imagination;  his  mind  took  color 
from  the  red  and  blue  patterns  thrown  on  the  pave- 
ment by  the  stained  glass  of  the  windows;  and  lie  may 
well  have  spelled  out  much  of  the  little  Latin  that  he 
knew  from  "the  knightly  brasses  of  the  tombs"  and 
"  cold  hie  jacets  of  the  dead." 

It  is  curious  how  early  his  education  was  self-deter- 
mined to  its  peculiar  ends.  A  dreamy,  silent,  solitary 
child,  given  to  fits  of  moodiness,  he  was  accounted 
dull  and  even  stupid.  He  would  not,  or  could  not, 
learn  his  letters  until,  in  his  seventh  year,  his  eye  was 
caught  by  the  illuminated  capitals  in  an  old  music 
folio.  From  these  his  mother  taught  him  the  alphabet, 
and  a  little  later  he  learned  to  read  from  a  black-letter 
Bible.  "Paint  me  an  angel  with  wings  and  a  trum- 
pet," he  answered,  when  asked  what  device  he  would 
choose  for  the  little  earthenware  bowl  that  had  been 
promised  him  as  a  gift.*  Colston's  Hospital,  where 
he  was  put  to  school,  was  built  on  the  site  of  a  demol- 
ished monastery  of  Carmelite  Friars;  the  scholars 
wore  blue  coats,  with  metal  plates  on  their  breasts 
stamped  with  the  image  of  a  dolphin,  the  armorial 
crest  of  the  founder,  and  had  their  hair  cropped  short 
in  imitation  of  the  monkish  tonsure.  As  the  boy 
grew  into  a  youth,  there  were  numbered  among  his 
near  acquaintances,  along  with  the  vintners,  sugar- 
bakers,  pipe-makers,  apothecaries,  and  other  trades- 
men of  the  Bristol  bourgeoisie,  two  church  organists,  a 
miniature  painter,  and  an  engraver  of  coats-of-arms — 

*  Willcox's  edition  of  "  Chattertou's  Poetical  Works,"  Cambridge, 
1842,  Vol.  I.  p.  xxi. 


342  A  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

figures  quaintly  suggestive  of  that  mingling  of  munic- 
ipal life  and  ecclesiastical-mediaeval  art  which  is  repro- 
duced in  the  Rowley  poems. 

"  Chatterton,"  testifies  one  of  his  early  acquaint- 
ances, **  was  fond  of  walking  in  the  fields,  particularly 
in  Redcliffe  meadows,  and  of  talking  of  his  manuscripts, 
and  sometimes  reading  them  there.  There  was  one 
spot  in  particular,  full  in  view  of  the  church,  in  which 
he  seemed  to  take  a  peculiar  delight.  He  would  fre- 
quently lay  himself  down,  fix  his  eyes  upon  the  church, 
and  seem  as  if  he  were  in  a  kind  of  trance.  Then  on 
a  sudden  he  would  tell  me:  'That  steeple  was  burnt 
down  by  lightning:  that  was  the  place  where  they 
formerly  acted  plays.'  "  "Among  his  early  studies,"  we 
are  told,  "antiquities,  and  especially  the  surroundings 
of  mediaeval  life,  were  the  favorite  subjects;  heraldry 
seems  especially  to  have  had  a  fascination  for  him. 
He  supplied  himself  with  charcoal,  black-lead,  ochre, 
and  other  colors;  and  with  these  it  was  his  delight  to 
delineate,  in  rough  and  quaint  figures,  churches, 
castles,  tombs  of  mailed  warriors,  heraldic  emblazon- 
ments, and  other  like  belongings  of  the  old  world."  * 

Is  there  not  a  breath  of  the  cloister  in  all  this,  re- 
minding one  of  the  child  martyr  in  Chaucer's  "  Prior- 
esse  Tale,"  the  "  litel  clergeon,  seven  yeer  of  age"? 

"  This  litel  child  his  litel  book  lerninge. 
As  he  sat  in  the  scole  at  his  prymen, 
He  '  Alma  redemptoris  '  herde  singe, 
As  children  lerned  hir  antiphoner." 

A   choir   boy   bred  in  cathedral   closes,  catching  his 
glimpses  of  the  sky  not  through  green  boughs,  but 

*  "  Memoir  by  Edward  Bell,"  p.  xxiv. 


Thomas  Cbatterton.  343 

through  the  treetops  of  the  episcopal  gardens  dis- 
colored by  the  lancet  windows  of  the  clear-stories; 
dreaming  in  the  organ  loft  in  the  pauses  of  the  music, 

when 

"  The  choristers,  sitting  with  faces  aslant. 
Feel  the  silence  to  consecrate  more  than  the  chant." 

Thus  Chatterton's  sensitive  genius  was  taking  the 
impress  of  its  environment.  As  he  pored  upon  the 
antiquities  of  his  native  city,  the  idea  of  its  life  did 
sweetly  creep  into  his  study  of  imagination;  and  he 
gradually  constructed  for  himself  a  picture  of  fifteenth- 
century  Bristol,  including  a  group  of  figures,  partly 
historical  and  partly  fabulous,  all  centering  about 
Master  William  Canynge.  Canynge  was  the  rich 
Bristol  merchant  who  founded  or  restored  St.  Mary 
Redcliffe's;  was  several  times  mayor  of  the  city  in 
the  reigns  of  Henry  VI.  and  Edward  IV.,  and  once 
represented  the  borough  in  Parliament.  Chatterton 
found  or  fabled  that  he  at  length  took  holy  orders  and 
became  dean  of  Westbury  College.  About  Canynge 
Chatterton  arranged  a  number  of  dramatis  personce, 
some  of  whose  names  he  discovered  in  old  records 
and  documents,  such  as  Carpenter,  Bishop  of  Wor- 
cester, and  Sir  Theobald  Gorges,  a  knight  of  Wraxhall, 
near  Bristol;  together  with  others  entirely  of  his  own 
invention — as  John  a  Iscam,  whom  he  represents  to 
have  been  a  canon  of  St.  Augustine's  Abbey  in  Bristol; 
and  especially  one  Thomas  Rowley,  parish  priest  of 
St.  John's,  employed  by  Canynge  to  collect  manu- 
scripts and  antiquities.  He  was  his  poet  laureate  and 
father  confessor,  and  to  him  Chatterton  ascribed  most 
of  the  verses  which  pass  under  the  general  name  of 
the  Rowley  poems.     But  Iscam  was  also  a  poet  and 


344  ^  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

Master  Canynge  himself  sometimes  burst  into  song. 
Samples  of  the  Iscam  and  the  Canynge  muse  diversify 
the  collection.  The  great  Bristol  merchant  was  a 
mediaeval  Mscenas,  and  at  his  house,  "  nempned  the 
Red  Lodge,"  were  played  interludes — "  Aella,"  "Godd- 
wyn,"  and  "The  Parliament  of  Sprites" — composed 
by  Rowley,  or  by  Rowley  and  Iscam  collaborating. 
Canynge  sometimes  wrote  the  prologues;  and  Rowley 
fed  his  patron  with  soft  dedication  and  complimentary 
verses:  "On  Our  Lady's  Church,"  "Letter  to  the 
dygne  Master  Canynge,"  "  The  Account  of  W.  Can- 
ynges  Feast,"  etc.  The  well-known  fifteenth-century 
poet  Lydgate  is  also  introduced  into  this  literary  ce'nacle, 
as  John  Ladgate,  and  made  to  exchange  verse  epistles 
with  Rowley  in  eighteenth-century  fashion.  Such 
is  the  remarkable  fiction  which  the  marvelous  boy 
erected,  as  a  scaffolding  for  the  fabric  of  sham-antique 
poetry  and  prose,  which  he  built  up  during  the  years 
1767  to  1770,  /.  e.,  from  the  fifteenth  to  the  eighteenth 
year  of  his  age. 

There  is  a  wide  distance  between  the  achievements 
of  this  untaught  lad  of  humble  birth  and  narrow 
opportunities,  and  the  works  of  the  great  Sir  Waiter, 
with  his  matured  powers  and  his  stores  of  solid 
antiquarian  lore.  But  the  impulse  that  conducted 
them  to  their  not  dissimilar  tasks  was  the  same.  In 
"Yarrow  Revisited,"  Wordsworth  uses,  apropos  of 
Scott,  the  expression  "localized  romance."  It  was, 
indeed,  the  absorbing  local  feeling  of  Scott,  his 
patriotism,  his  family  pride,  his  attachment  to  the 
soil,  that  brought  passion  and  poetry  into  his  histori- 
cal pursuits.  With  Chatterton,  too,  this  absorption 
in  the  past  derived  its  intensity  from  his  love  of  place. 


Thomas  Chatterton.  345 

Bristol  was  his  world;  in  "  The  Battle  of  Hastings," 
he  did  not  forget  to  introduce  a  Bristowan  contingent, 
led  by  a  certain  fabulous  Alfwold,  and  performing 
prodigies  of  valor  upon  the  Normans,  The  image  of 
medigeval  life  which  he  succeeded  in  creating  was,  of 
course,  a  poor,  faint  simulacrum,  compared  with  Scott's. 
He  lacked  knowledge,  leisure,  friends,  long  life — 
everything  that  was  needed  to  give  his  work  solidity. 
All  that  he  had  was  a  creative,  though  undisciplined 
imagination,  together  with  an  astonishing  industry, 
persistence,  and  secretiveness.  Yet  with  all  his  dis- 
advantages, his  work,  with  all  its  imperfections,  is  far 
more  striking  than  the  imitative  verse  of  the  Wartons, 
or  the  thin,  diffused  mediaevalism  of  Walpole  and 
Clara  Reeve.  It  is  the  product  of  a  more  original 
mind  and  a  more  intense  conception. 

In  the  muniment  room  over  the  north  porch  of 
St.  Mary  Redcliffe's  were  several  old  chests  filled 
with  parchments:  architectural  memoranda,  church, 
wardens'  accounts,  inventories  of  vestments,  and 
similar  parish  documents.  One  of  these  chests, 
known  as  Master  Canynge's  coffer,  had  been  broken 
open  some  years  before,  and  whatever  was  of  value 
among  its  contents  removed  to  a  place  of  safety.  The 
remainder  of  the  parchments  had  been  left  scattered 
about,  and  Chatterton's  father  had  carried  a  number 
of  them  home  and  used  them  to  cover  copy-books. 
The  boy's  eye  was  attracted  by  these  yellow  sheep- 
skins, with  their  antique  script;  he  appropriated  them 
and  kept  them  locked  up  in  his  room. 

How  early  he  conceived  the  idea  of  making  this 
treasure-trove  responsible  for  the  Rowley  myth,  which 
was  beginning  to  take  shape  in  his  mind,  is  uncertain. 


346  A  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

According  to  the  testimony  of  a  schoolfellow,  by 
name  Thistlethwaite,  Chatterton  told  him  in  the 
summer  of  1764  that  he  had  a  number  of  old  manu- 
scripts, found  in  a  chest  in  Redcliffe  Church,  and 
that  he  had  lent  one  of  them  to  Thomas  Philips,  an 
usher  in  Colston's  Hospital.  Thistlethwaite  says  that 
Philips  showed  him  this  manuscript,  a  piece  of  vellum 
pared  close  around  the  edge,  on  which  was  traced  in 
pale  and  yellow  writing,  as  if  faded  with  age,  a  poem 
which  he  thinks  identical  with  "  Elinoure  and  Juga," 
afterward  published  by  Chatterton  in  the  Town  and 
Country  Magazine  for  May,  1769.  One  is  inclined  to 
distrust  this  evidence.  "The  Castle  of  Otranto"  was 
first  published  in  December,  1764,  and  the  "Reliques," 
only  in  the  year  following.  The  latter  was  certainly 
known  to  Chatterton;  many  of  the  Rowley  poems, 
"The  Bristowe  Tragedie,"  e.  g.,  and  the  minstrel 
songs  in  "Aella,"  show  ballad  influence*;  while  it 
seems  not  unlikely  that  Chatterton  was  moved  to  take 
a  hint  from  the  disguise — slight  as  it  was — assumed  by 
Walpole  in  the  preface  to  his  romance,  f  But  perhaps 
this  was  not  needed  to  suggest  to  Chatterton  that  the 
surest  way  to  win  attention  to  his  poems  would  be  to 
ascribe  them  to  some  fictitious  bard  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  It  was  the  day  of  literary  forgery;  the  Ossian 
controversy  was  raging,  and  the  tide  of  popular  favor 

*  Cf.     ("Battle  of  Hastings,"  i.  xx) 

"  The  grey-goose  pinion,  that  thereon  was  set, 
Eftsoons  with  smoking  crimson  blood  was  wet " 

with  the  lines  from  "  Chevy  Chase  "  {ante,  p.  295).     To  be  sure  the 
ballad  was  widely  current  before  the  publication  of  the  "  Reliques." 
f  See  ante,  p.  237. 


Thomas  Chatterton.  347 

set  strongly  toward  the  antique.  A  series  of  avowed 
imitations  of  old  English  poetry,  however  clever, 
would  have  had  small  success.  But  the  discovery  of 
a  hitherto  unknown  fifteenth-century  poet  was  an 
announcement  sure  to  interest  the  learned  and  per- 
haps a  large  part  of  the  reading  public.  Besides, 
instances  are  not  rare  where  a  writer  has  done  his 
best  work  under  a  mask.  The  poems  composed  by 
Chatterton  in  the  disguise  of  Rowley — a  dramatically 
imagined  persona  behind  which  he  lost  his  own 
identity — are  full  of  a  curious  attractiveness;  while 
his  acknowledged  pieces  are  naught.  It  is  not  worth 
while  to  bear  down  very  heavily  on  the  moral  aspects 
of  this  kind  of  deception.  The  question  is  one  of 
literary  methods  rather  than  of  ethics.  If  the  writer 
succeeds  by  the  skill  of  his  imitations,  and  the 
ingenuity  of  the  evidence  that  he  brings  to  support 
them,  in  actually  imposing  upon  the  public  for  a  time, 
the  success  justifies  the  attempt.  The  artist's  purpose 
is  to  create  a  certain  impression,  and  the  choice  of 
means  must  be  left  to  himself. 

-  In  the  summer  of  1764  Chatterton  was  barely  twelve, 
and  wonderful  as  his  precocity  was,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  he  had  got  so  far  in  the  evolution  of  the 
Rowley  legend  as  Thistlethwaite's  story  would  imply. 
But  it  is  certain  that  three  years  later,  in  the  spring 
of  1767,  Chatterton  gave  Mr.  Henry  Burgum,  a  worthy 
pewterer  of  Bristol,  a  parchment  emblazoned  with  the 
"de  Bergham,"  coat-of-arms,  which  he  pretended  to 
have  found  in  St.  Mary's  Church,  furnishing  him  also 
with  two  copy-books,  in  which  were  transcribed  the 
"de  Bergham,"  pedigree,  together  with  three  poems 
in    pseudo-antique   spelling.     One    of    these,     "The 


34^  A  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

Tournament,"  described  a  joust  in  which  figured  one 
Sir  Johan  de  Berghamme,  a  presumable  ancestor  of 
the  gratified  pewterer.  Another  of  them,  "The 
Romaunte  of  the  Cnyghte,"  purported  to  be  the  work 
of  this  hero  of  the  tilt-yard,  "who  spent  his  whole 
life  in  tilting,"  but  notwithstanding  found  time  to 
write  several  books  and  translate  "some  part  of  the 
Iliad  under  the  title  *  Romance  of  Troy.'  " 

All  this  stuff  was  greedily  swallowed  by  Burgum, 
and  the  marvelous  boy  next  proceeded  to  befool  Mr. 
William  Barrett,  a  surgeon  and  antiquary  who  was 
engaged  in  writing  a  history  of  Bristol.  To  him 
he  supplied  copies  of  supposed  documents  in  the 
muniment  room  of  Redcliffe  Church:  "Of  the  Aun- 
tiaunte  Forme  of  Monies,"  and  the  like:  deeds, 
bills,  letters,  inscriptions,  proclamations,  accounts  of 
churches  and  other  buildings,  collected  by  Rowley 
for  his  patron,  Canynge:  many  of  which  this  singularly 
uncritical  historian  incorporated  in  his  "History  of 
Bristol,"  published  some  twenty  years  later.  He  also 
imparted  to  Barrett  two  Rowleian  poems,  "  The  Parlia- 
ment of  Sprites,"  and  "The  Battle  of  Hastings"  (in 
two  quite  different  versions).  In  September,  1768,  a 
new  bridge  was  opened  at  Bristol  over  the  Avon;  and 
Chatterton,  who  had  now  been  apprenticed  to  an 
attorney,  took  advantage  of  the  occasion  to  send 
anonymously  to  the  printer  of  Farley  s  Bristol  Journal 
a  description  of  the  mayor's  first  passing  over  the  old 
bridge  in  the  reign  of  Henry  II.  This  was  composed 
in  obsolete  language  and  alleged  to  have  been  copied 
from  a  contemporary  manuscript.  It  was  the  first 
published  of  Chatterton's  fabrications.  In  the 
years  1768-69  he  produced  and  gave  to  Mr.   George 


Thomas  Chatterton.  349 

Catcott  the  long  tragical  interlude  "Aella,"  ''The 
Bristowe  Tragedie,"  and  other  shorter  pieces,  all  of 
which  he  declared  to  be  transcripts  from  manuscripts 
in  Canynge's  chest,  and  the  work  of  Thomas  Rowley, 
a  secular  priest  of  Bristol,  who  flourished  about  1460. 
Catcott  was  a  local  book-collector  and  the  partner 
of  Mr.  Burgum.  He  was  subsequently  nicknamed 
"Rowley's  midwife." 

In  December,  1768,  Chatterton  opened  a  corre- 
spondence with  James  Dodsley,  the  London  publisher, 
saying  that  several  ancient  poems  had  fallen  into  his 
hands,  copies  of  which  he  offered  to  supply  him,  if  he 
would  send  a  guinea  to  cover  expenses.  He  inclosed 
a  specimen  of  "^lla."  "The  motive  that  actuates 
me  to  do  this,"  he  wrote,  "is  to  convince  the  world 
that  the  monks  (of  whom  some  have  so  despicable  an 
opinion)  were  not  such  blockheads  as  generally 
thought,  and  that  good  poetry  might  be  wrote  in  the 
dark  days  of  superstition,  as  well  as  in  these  more 
enlightened  ages,"  Dodsley  took  no  notice  of  the 
letters,  and  the  owner  of  the  Rowley  manuscripts  next 
turned  to  Horace  Walpole,  whose  tastes  as  a  virtuoso, 
a  lover  of  Gothic,  and  a  romancer  might  be  counted  on 
to  enlist  his  curiosity  in  Chatterton's  find.  The  docu- 
ment which  he  prepared  for  Walpole  was  a  prose  paper 
entitled  "The  Ryse  of  Peyncteynge  yn  Englande, 
wroten  by  T.  Rowleie,  1469,  for  Mastre  Canynge," 
and  containing  inter  alia,  the  following  extraordi- 
nary "anecdote  of  painting"  about  Affiem,  an  Anglo- 
Saxon  glass-stainer  of  Edmond's  reign  who  was  taken 
prisoner  by  the  Danes.  "Inkarde,  a  soldyer  of  the 
Danes,  was  to  slea  hym;  onne  the  Nete  before  the 
Feeste  of  Deathe  hee  founde  AfHem  to  bee  hys  Broder. 


35°  ^  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

Affrighte  chaynede  uppe  hys  soule.  Gastnesse  dwelled 
yn  his  Breaste.  Oscarre,  the  greate  Dane,  gave  best 
hee  shulde  bee  forslagene  with  the  commeynge  Sunne: 
no  tears  colde  availe;  the  morne  cladde  yn  roabes  of 
ghastness  was  come,  whan  the  Danique  Kynge  be- 
hested  Oscarre  to  arraie  hys  Knyghtes  eftsoones  for 
Warre.  Afflem  was  put  yn  theyre  fiyeynge  Battailes, 
sawe  his  Countrie  ensconced  wyth  Foemen,  hadde  hys 
Wyfe  ande  Chyldrenne  brogten  Capteeves  to  hys 
Shyppe,  ande  was  deieynge  wythe  Soorowe,  whanne 
the  loude  blautaunte  Wynde  hurled  the  Battayle 
agaynste  an  Heck.  Forfraughte  wythe  embolleynge 
waves,  he  sawe  hys  Broder,  Wyfe  and  Chyldrenne 
synke  to  Deathe:  himself  was  throwen  onne  a  Banke 
ynne  the  Isle  of  Wyghte,  to  lyve  hys  lyfe  forgard  to 
all  Emmoise:  thus  moche  for  Afflem."  * 

This  paper  was  accompanied  with  notes  explaining 
queer  words  and  giving  short  biographical  sketches 
of  Canynge,  Rowley,  and  other  imaginary  characters, 
such  as  John,  second  abbot  of  St.  Austin's  Minster, 
who  was  the  first  English  painter  in  oils  and  also  the 
greatest  poet  of  his  age.  "Take  a  specimen  of  his 
poetry,  *  On  King  Richard  I.': 

'"  Harte  of  Lyone!  shake  thie  Sworde, 

Bare  thie  mortheynge  steinede  honde,'  etc." 

The  whole  was  inclosed  in  a  short  note  to  Walpole, 

which  ran  thus: 

*  Walter  Scott  quotes  this  passage  in  his  review  of  Southey  and 
Cottle's  edition  of  Chatterton  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  for  April, 
1804,  and  comments  as  follows:  "  While  Chatterton  wrote  plain  nar- 
rative, he  imitated  with  considerable  success  the  dry,  concise  style  of 
an  antique  annalist;  but  when  anything  required  a  more  dignified  or 
sentimental  style,  he  mounted  the  fatal  and  easily  recognized  car  of 
the  son  of  Fingal." 


Thomas  Chatter  ton.  351 

"  Sir,  Being  versed  a  little  in  antiquitys,  I  have  met 
witii  several  curious  manuscripts,  among  which  the 
following  may  be  of  Service  to  you,  in  any  future  Edi- 
tion of  your  truly  entertaining  Anecdotes  of  Painting.* 
In  correcting  the  mistakes  (if  any)  in  the  Notes,  you 
will  greatly  oblige 

"Your  most  humble  Servant, 

"  Thomas  Chatterton." 

Walpole  replied  civilly,  thanking  his  correspondent 
for  what  he  had  sent  and  for  his  offer  of  communica- 
ting his  manuscripts,  but  disclaiming  any  ability  to  cor- 
rect Chatterton's  notes.  "I  have  not  the  happiness  of 
understanding  the  Saxon  language,  and,  without  your 
learned  notes,  should  not  have  been  able  to  compre- 
hend Rowley's  text."  He  asks  where  Rowley's  poems 
are  to  be  found,  offers  to  print  them,  and  pronounces 
the  Abbot  John's  verses  "  wonderful  for  their  har- 
mony and  spirit."  This  encouragement  called  out 
a  second  letter  from  Chatterton,  with  another  and 
longer  extract  from  the  "Historic  of  Peyncteynge  yn 
Englande,"  including  translations  into  the  Rowley 
dialect  of  passages  from  a  pair  of  mythical  Saxon 
poets:  Ecca,  Bishop  of  Hereford,  and  Elmar,  Bishop 
of  Selseie,  "fetyve  yn  Workes  of  ghastlienesse,"  as 
ecce  signuni: 

"  Nowe  maie  alle  Helle  open  to  golpe  thee  downe,"  etc. 

But  by  this  time  Walpole  had  begun  to  suspect 
imposture.  He  had  been  lately  bitten  in  the  Ossian 
business  and  had  grown  wary  in  consequence.     More- 

*  Publication  begun  1761:  2d  edition  1768.  Chatterton's  letter  was 
dated  March  25  [1769]- 


352  <v^  History  of  English  ^Romanticism. 

over,  Chatterton  had  been  incautious  enough  to  show 
his  hand  in  his  second  letter  (March  30).  "He  in- 
formed me,"  said  Walpole,  in  his  history  of  the  affair, 
"that  he  was  the  son  of  a  poor  widow  .  .  .  that  he 
was  clerk  or  apprentice  to  an  attorney,  but  had  a  taste 
and  turn  for  more  elegant  studies;  and  hinted  a  wish 
that  I  would  assist  him  with  my  interest  in  emerging 
out  of  so  dull  a  profession,  by  procuring  him  some 
place."  Meanwhile,  distrusting  his  own  scholar- 
ship, Walpole  had  shown  the  manuscripts  to  his 
friends  Gray  and  Mason,  who  promptly  pronounced 
them  modern  fabrications  and  recommended  him  to 
return  them  without  further  notice.  But  Walpole, 
good-naturedly  considering  that  it  was  no  "grave 
crime  in  a  young  bard  to  have  forged  false  notes  of 
hand  that  were  to  pass  current  only  in  the  parish  of 
Parnassus,"  wrote  his  ingenious  correspondent  a  letter 
of  well-meant  advice,  counseling  him  to  stick  to  his 
profession,  and  saying  that  he  "had  communicated 
his  transcripts  to  much  better  judges,  and  that  they 
were  by  no  means  satisfied  with  the  authenticity  of 
his  supposed  manuscripts."  Chatterton  then  wrote 
for  his  manuscripts,  and  after  some  delay — Walpole 
having  been  absent  in  Paris  for  several  months — they 
were  returned  to  him. 

In  1769  Chatterton  had  begun  contributing  mis- 
cellaneous articles,  in  prose  and  verse,  to  the  Town 
and  Country  Magazine,  a  London  periodical.  Among 
these  appeared  the  eclogue  of  "  Elinoure  and  Juga, "  * 
the  only  one  of  the  Rowley  poems  printed  during  its 
author's  lifetime.  He  had  now  turned  his  pen  to  the 
service  of  politics,  espousing  the  side  of  Wilkes  and 

*  See  atite^  p.  346. 


II 


Thomas  Chatterton.  353 

liberty.  In  April,  1770,  he  left  Bristol  for  London, 
and  cast  himself  upon  the  hazardous  fortunes  of  a 
literary  career.  Most  tragical  is  the  story  of  the 
poor,  unfriended  lad's  struggle  against  fate  for  the 
next  few  months.  He  scribbled  incessantly  for 
the  papers,  receiving  little  or  no  pay.  Starvation 
confronted  him;  he  was  too  proud  to  ask  help,  and 
on  August  24  he  took  poison  and  died,  at  the  age 
of  seventeen  years  and  nine  months. 

With  Chatterton's  acknowledged  writings  we  have 
nothing  here  to  do;  they  include  satires  in  the  manner 
of  Churchill,  political  letters  in  the  manner  of  Junius, 
squibs,  lampoons,  verse  epistles,  elegies,  "African 
eclogues,"  a  comic  burletta,  "The  Revenge  " — played 
at  Marylebone  Gardens  shortly  after  his  death — with 
essays  and  sketches  in  the  style  that  the  Spectator 
and  Rambler  had  made  familiar:  "The  Adventures 
of  a  Star,"  "The  Memoirs  of  a  Sad  Dog,"  and  the 
like.  They  exhibit  a  precocious  cleverness,  but  have 
no  value  and  no  interest  to-day.  One  gets  from 
Chatterton's  letters  and  miscellanies  an  unpleasant 
impression  of  his  character.  There  is  not  only  the 
hectic  quality  of  too  early  ripeness  which  one  detects 
in  Keats'  correspondence;  and  the  defiant  swagger, 
the  affectation  of  wickedness  and  knowingness  that 
one  encounters  in  the  youthful  Byron,  and  that  is  apt 
to  attend  the  stormy  burst  of  irregular  genius  upon 
the  world;  but  there  are  things  that  imply  a  more 
radical  unscrupulousness.  But  it  would  be  harsh  to 
urge  any  such  impressions  against  one  who  was  no 
more  than  a  boy  when  he  perished,  and  whose  brief 
career  had  struggled  through  cold  obstruction  to  its 
bitter  end.     The  best  traits  in  Chatterton's  character 


354  c^  History  of  English  '^manticism. 

appear  to  have  been  his  proud  spirit  of  independence 
and  his  warm  family  affections. 

The  death  of  an  obscure  penny-a-liner,  like  young 
Chatterton,  made  little  noise  at  first.  But  gradually 
it  became  rumored  about  in  London  literary  coteries 
that  manuscripts  of  an  interesting  kind  existed  at 
Bristol,  purporting  to  be  transcripts  from  old  English 
poems;  and  that  the  finder,  or  fabricator,  of  the  same 
was  the  unhappy  lad  who  had  taken  arsenic  the  other 
day,  to  anticipate  a  slower  death  from  hunger.  It 
was  in  April,  177 1,  that  Walpole  first  heard  of  the  fate 
of  his  would-be  protege.  "Dining,"  he  says,  "at  the 
Royal  Academy,  Dr.  Goldsmith  drew  the  attention  of 
the  company  with  an  account  of  a  marvelous  treasure 
of  ancient  poems  lately  discovered  at  Bristol,  and  ex- 
pressed enthusiastic  belief  in  them;  for  which  he  was 
laughed  at  by  Dr.  Johnson,  who  was  present.  I  soon 
found  this  was  the  trouvaille  of  my  friend  Chatterton, 
and  I  told  Dr.  Goldsmith  that  this  novelty  was  known 
to  me,  who  might,  if  I  had  pleased,  have  had  the  honor 
of  ushering  the  great  discovery  to  the  learned  world. 
You  may  imagine,  sir,  we  did  not  all  agree  in  the 
measure  of  our  faith;  but  though  his  credulity  diverted 
me,  my  mirth  was  soon  dashed;  for,  on  asking  about 
Chatterton,  he  told  me  he  had  been  in  London  and 
had  destroyed  himself." 

With  the  exception  of  "  Elinour  and  Juga,"  already 
mentioned,  the  Rowley  poems  were  still  unprinted. 
The  manuscripts,  in  Chatterton's  handwriting,  were 
mostly  in  the  possession  of  Barrett  and  Catcott.  They 
purported  to  be  copies  of  Rowley's  originals;  but  of 
these  alleged  originals,  the  only  specimens  brought 
forward  by  Chatterton  were  a  few  scraps  of  parchment 


Thomas  Chatter  ton.  355 

containing,  in  one  instance,  the  first  thirty-four  lines 
of  the  poem  entitled  "  The  Storie  of  William  Canynge  " ; 
in  another  a  prose  account  of  one  "  Symonne  de  Byr- 
tonne,"  and,  in  still  others,  the  whole  of  the  short-verse 
pieces,  '' Songe  to  Aella  "  and  "  The  Accounte  of  W. 
Canynge's  Feast."  These  scraps  of  vellum  are  de- 
scribed as  about  six  inches  square,  smeared  with  glue 
or  brown  varnish,  or  stained  with  ochre,  to  give  them 
an  appearance  of  age.  Thomas  Warton  had  seen  one 
of  them,  and  pronounced  it  a  clumsy  forgery;  the 
script  not  of  the  fifteenth  century,  but  unmistakably 
modern.  Southey  describes  another  as  written,  for 
the  most  part,  in  an  attorney's  regular  engrossing 
hand.  Mr.  Skeat  "  cannot  find  the  slightest  indica- 
tion that  Chatterton  had  ever  seen  a  MS.  of  early 
date;  on  the  contrary,  he  never  uses  the  common  con- 
tractions, and  he  was  singularly  addicted  to  the  use 
of  capitals,  which  in  old  MSS.  are  rather  scarce." 

Boswell  tells  how  he  and  Johnson  went  down  to 
Bristol  in  April,  1776,  "where  I  was  entertained  with 
seeing  him  inquire  upon  the  spot  into  the  authenticity 
of  Rowley's  poetry,  as  I  had  seen  him  inquire  upon 
the  spot  into  the  authenticity  of  Ossian's  poetry. 
Johnson  said  of  Chatterton,  'This  is  the  most  extraor- 
dinary young  man  that  has  encountered  my  knowledge. 
It  is  wonderful  how  the  whelphas  written  such  things.'" 

In  1777,  seven  years  after  Chatterton's  death,  his 
Rowley  poems  were  first  collected  and  published  by 
Thomas  Tyrwhitt,  the  Chaucerian  editor,  who  gave, 
in  an  appendix,  his  reasons  for  believing  that  Chat- 
terton   was  their  real   author,  and    Rowley  a  myth.* 

*  "  Poems  supposed  to  have  been  written  at'  Bristol  by  Thomas 
Rowley  and  others  in  the  fifteenth  century.     The  greatest  part  now 


35*5  c^  History  of  English  "^manticism. 

These  reasons  are  convincing  to  any  modern  scholar. 
Tyrwhitt's  opinion  was  shared  at  the  time  by  all  com- 
petent authorities — Gray,  Thomas  Warton,  and  Ma- 
lone,  the  editor  of  the  va?-torum  Shakspere,  among 
others.  Nevertheless,  a  controversy  sprang  up  over 
Rowley,  only  less  lively  than  the  dispute  about  Os- 
sian,  which  had  been  going  on  since  1760,  Rowley's 
most  prominent  champions  were  the  Rev.  Dr.  Symmes, 
who  wrote  in  the  London  Review;  the  Rev.  Dr.  Sher- 
win,  in  the  Gentleman  s  Magazine;  Dr.  Jacob  Bryant,* 
and  Jeremiah  Milles,  D.  D.,  Dean  of  Exeter,  who  pub- 
lished a  sumptuous  quarto  edition  of  the  poems  in 
1782.1  These  asserters  of  Rowley  belonged  to  the 
class  of  amateur  scholars  whom  Edgar  Poe  used  to 
speak  of  as  "cultivated  old  clergymen."  They  had 
the  usual  classical  training  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge 
graduates,  but  no  precise  knowledge  of  old  English 
literature.  They  had  the  benevolent  curiosity  of  Mr. 
Pickwick,  and  the  gullibility — the  large,  easy  swallow 
— which  seems  to  go  with  the  clerico-antiquarian  habit 
of  mind. 

Nothing  is  so  extinct  as  an  extinct  controversy;  and, 
unlike  the  Ossian  puzzle,  which  was  a  harder  nut  to 
crack,  this  Rowley  controversy  was  really  settled  from 

first  published  from  the  most  authentic  copies,  with  engraved  speci- 
mens of  one  of  the  MSS.  To  which  are  added  a  preface,  an  intro- 
ductory account  of  the  several  pieces,  and  a  glossary.  London: 
Printed  for  T.  Payne  &  Son  at  the  Mews  Gate.     MDCCLXXVII." 

"*  Observations  upon  the  Poems  of  Thomas  Rowley,"  2  vols. 
1781. 

"  f  Poems  supposed  to  have  been  written  at  Bristol  in  the  fifteenth 
century  by  Thomas  Rowley,  Priest,  etc.  With  a  commentary  in 
which  the  antiquity  of  them  is  considered  and  defended." 


Thomas  Chatterton.  357 

the  start.  It  is  not  essential  to  our  purpose  to  give 
any  extended  history  of  it.  The  evidence  relied  upon 
by  the  supporters  of  Rowley  was  mainly  of  the  exter- 
nal kind:  personal  testimony,  and  especially  the  ante- 
cedent unlikeliness  that  a  boy  of  Chatterton's  age  and 
imperfect  education  could  have  reared  such  an  elab- 
orate structure  of  deceit;  together  with  the  inferiority 
of  his  acknowledged  writings  to  the  poems  that  he 
ascribed  to  Rowley.  But  Tyrwhitt  was  a  scholar  of 
unusual  thoroughness  and  acuteness;  and,  having  a 
special  acquaintance  with  early  English,  he  was  able 
to  bring  to  the  decision  of  the  question  evidence  of  an 
internal  nature  which  became  more  convincing  in  pro- 
portion as  the  knowledge  necessary  to  understand  his 
argument  increased;  /.  e.,  as  the  number  of  readers  in- 
creased, who  knew  something  about  old  English  poe- 
try. Indeed,  it  was  nothing  but  the  general  ignorance 
of  the  spelling,  flexions,  vocabulary,  and  scansion  of 
Middle  English  verse,  that  made  the  controversy 
possible. 

Tyrwhitt  pointed  out  that  the  Rowleian  dialect  was 
not  English  of  the  fifteenth  century,  nor  of  any  cen- 
tury, but  a  grotesque  jumble  of  archaic  words  of  very 
different  periods  and  dialects.  The  orthography  and 
grammatical  forms  were  such  as  occurred  in  no  old 
English  poet  known  to  the  student  of  literature.  The 
fact  that  Rowley  used  constantly  the  possessive  pro- 
nominal form  itts,  instead  of  his;  or  the  other  fact  that 
he  used  the  termination  en  in  the  singular  of  the  verb, 
was  alone  enough  to  stamp  the  poems  as  spurious. 
Tyrwhitt  also  showed  that  the  syntax,  diction,  idioms, 
and  stanza  forms  were  modern;  that  if  modern  words 
were  substituted  throughout  for  the  antique,  and  the 


358  z/l  History  of  English  %omanticism. 

spelling  modernized,  the  verse  would  read  like  eight- 
eenth-century work.  "If  anyone,"  says  Scott,  in  his 
review  of  the  Southey  and  Cottle  edition,  "resists  the 
internal  evidence  of  the  style  of  Rowley's  poems,  we 
make  him  welcome  to  the  rest  of  the  argument;  to  his 
belief  that  the  Saxons  imported  heraldry  and  gave 
armorial  bearings  (which  were  not  known  till  the  time 
of  the  Crusades);  that  Mr.  Robert  [sic]  Canynge,  in 
the  reign  of  Edward  IV.,  encouraged  drawing  and  had 
private  theatricals."  In  this  article  Scott  points  out 
a  curious  blunder  of  Chatterton's  which  has  become 
historic,  though  it  is  only  one  of  a  thousand.  In  the 
description  of  the  cook  in  the  General  Prologue  to  the 
"Canterbury  Tales,"  Chaucer  had  written: 

"  But  gret  harm  was  it,  as  it  thoughte  me, 
That  on  his  schyne  a  mormal  hadde  he, 
For  blankmanger  he  made  with  the  beste." 

Mormal,  in  this  passage,  means  a  cancerous  sore,  and 
blajikmanger  is  a  certain  dish  or  confection — the 
modern  blancmajige.  But  a  confused  recollection  of 
the  whole  was  in  Chatterton's  mind,  when,  among  the 
fragments  of  paper  and  parchment  which  he  covered 
with  imitations  of  ancient  script,  and  which  are  now 
in  the  British  Museum,— "  The  Yellow  Roll,"  "The 
Purple  Roll,"  etc., — he  inserted  the  following  title  in 
"  The  Rolls  of  St.  Bartholomew's  Priory,"  purporting 
to  be  old  medical  prescriptions:  "The  cure  of  mor- 
malles  and  the  waterie  leprosie;  the  roUe  of  the  blacke 
mainger";  turning  Chaucer's  innocent  blankmanger 
into  some  kind  of  imaginary  black  mange. 

Skeat  believes  that  Chatterton  had  read  very  little 
of  Chaucer,  probably  only  a  small  portion  of  the  Pro- 


Thomas  Chatter  ton.  359 

logue  to  the  "Canterbury  Tales."  "  If  he  had  really 
taken  pains,"  he  thinks,  "to  read  and  study  Chaucer 
or  Lydgate  or  any  old  author  earlier  than  the  age  of 
Spenser,  the  Rowley  poems  would  have  been  very 
different.  They  would  then  have  borne  some  resem- 
blance to  the  language  of  the  fifteenth  century,  whereas 
they  are  rather  less  like  the  language  of  that  period 
than  of  any  other.  The  spelling  of  the  words  is  fre- 
quently too  late,  or  too  bizarre,  whilst  many  of  the 
words  themselves  are  too  archaic  or  too  uncommon."  * 
But  this  internal  evidence,  which  was  so  satisfactory 
to  Scott,  was  so  little  convincing  to  Chatterton's  con- 
temporaries that  Tyrwhitt  felt  called  upon  to  publish 
in  1782  a  "  Vindication  "  of  his  appendix ;  and  Thomas 
Warton  put  forth  in  the  same  year  an  "  Enquiry,"  in 
which  he  reached  practically  the  same  conclusions 
with  Tyrwhitt.  And  yet  Warton  had  devoted  the 
twenty-sixth  section  of  the  second  volume  of  his 
"History  of  English  Poetry  "  (1778,)  to  a  review  of 
the  Rowley  poems,  on  the  ground  that  "as  they  are 
held  to  be  real  by  many  respectable  critics,  it  was  his 
duty  to  give  them  a  place  in  this  series":  a  curious 
testimony  to  the  uncertainty  of  the  public  mind  on 
the  question,  and  a  half  admission  that  the  poems 
might  possibly  turn  out  to  be  genuine,  f 

Tyrwhitt  proved  clearly  enough  that  Chatterton 
wrote  the  Rowley  poems,  but  it  was  reserved  for  Mr. 
Skeat  to  show  just  how  he  wrote  them.  The  modus 
operandi  \idiS  dibo\^t  S.S  follows:  Chatterton  first  made, 

*  "  Essay  on  the  Rowley  Poems  :  "  Skeat's edition  of  "Chatterton's 
Poetical  Works,"  Vol.  II.  p.  xxvii. 

f  For  a  bibliography  of  the  Rowley  controversy,  consult  the  article 
on  Chatterton  in  the  "  Dictionary  of  National  Biography." 


360  <i/l  History  of  English  ^Romanticism. 

for  his  private  use,  a  manuscript  glossary,  by  copying 
out  the  words  in  the  glossary  to  Speght's  edition  of 
Chaucer,  and  those  marked  as  old  in  Bailey's  and 
Kersey's  English  Dictionaries.  Next  he  wrote  his 
poem  in  modern  English,  and  finally  rewrote  it,  sub- 
stituting the  archaic  words  for  their  modern  equiva- 
lents, and  altering  the  spelling  throughout  into  an 
exaggerated  imitation  of  the  antique  spelling  in 
Speght's  Chaucer.  The  mistakes  that  he  made  are 
instructive,  as  showing  how  closely  he  followed  his 
authorities,  and  how  little  independent  knowledge  he 
had  of  genuine  old  English.  Thus,  to  give  a  few 
typical  examples  of  the  many  in  Mr.  Skeat's  notes:  in 
Kersey's  dictionary  occurs  the  word  gare,  defined  as 
<*  cause."  This  is  the  verb  gar,  familiar  to  all  readers 
of  Burns,*  and  meaning  to  cause,  to  make;  but  Chat- 
terton,  taking  it  for  the  fioun,  cause,  employs  it  with 
grotesque  incorrectness  in  such  connections  as  these: 

"  Perchance  in  Virtue's  gare  rhyme  might  be  then"  : 
"  If  in  this  battle  luck  deserts  our  gare." 

Again  the  Middle  English  /lowfe/i  (Modern  English, 
Aoot)  is  defined  by  Speght  as  "hallow,"  t.  e.,  halloo. 
But  Kersey  and  Bailey  misprint  this  ''hollow";  and 
Chatterton,  entering  it  so  in  his  manuscript  list  of  old 
words,  evidently  takes  it  to  be  the  adjective  "hollow" 
and  uses  it  thus  in  the  line: 

"  Houten  are  wordes  for  to  telle  his  doe,"  i.  e., 
Hollow  are  words  to  tell  his  doings. 

Still  again,  in  a  passage  already  quoted,!  it  is  told  how 

*  "  Ah,  gentle  dames  !  it  gars  me  greet." 

—  Tarn  o'Shanter. 
f  Ante,  p.  350. 


Thomas  Chatterton.  3*5 1 

the   "Wynde  hurled  the  Battayle  " — Rowleian   for  a 

small  boat — "agaynste  an  Heck."     Heck  in  this  and 

other  passages   was   a  puzzle.     From   the  context   it 

obviously  meant  "  rock,"  but  where  did  Chatterton  get 

it?    Mr.    Skeat    explains    this.     Heck   is   a    provincial 

word  signifying  "rack,"/.  <?.,  "hay-rack  ";  but  Kersey 

misprinted   it  "rock,"  and   Chatterton   followed   him. 

A  typical  instance  of  the  kind  of  error  that  Chatterton 

was  perpetually  committing  was  his  understanding  the 

"Listed,  bounded,"  /.  e.,  edged  (as  in  the  "list"   or 

selvage  of   cloth)    for    "bounded"    in    the   sense    of 

jimiped,  and  so  coining  from  it  the  verb  "to  liss  "  = 

to  jump: 

"  The  headed  javelin  lisseth  here  and  there." 

Every  page  in  the  Rowley  poems  abounds  in  forms 
which  would  have  been  as  strange  to  an  Englishman 
of  the  fifteenth  as  they  are  to  one  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Adjectives  are  used  for  nouns,  nouns  for 
verbs,  past  participles  for  present  infinitives;  and 
derivatives  and  variants  are  employed  which  never  had 
any  existence,  such  as  hopelen  =  hopelessness,  and 
anere  ■=!  another.  Skeat  says,  that  "an  analysis  of 
the  glossary  in  Milles's  edition  shows  that  the  genuine 
old  English  words  correctly  used,  occurring  in  the 
Rowleian  dialect,  amount  to  only  about  seven  per 
cent,  of  all  the  old  words  employed."  It  is  probable 
that,  by  constant  use  of  his  manuscript  glossary,  the 
words  became  fixed  in  Chatterton's  memory  and  he 
acquired  some  facility  in  composing  at  first  hand  in 
this  odd  jargon.  Thus  he  uses  the  archaic  words  quite 
freely  as  rhyme  words,  which  he  would  not  have  been 
likely  to  do  unless  he  had  formed  the  habit  of  thinking, 
to  some  degree,  in  Rowleian. 


362  tA  History  of  English  '^manticism. 

The  question  now  occurs,  apart  from  the  tragic 
interest  of  Chatterton's  career,  from  the  mystery  con- 
nected with  the  incubation  and  hatching  of  the  Rowley 
poems,  and  from  their  value  as  records  of  a  very 
unusual  precocity — vv^hat  independent  worth  have  they 
as  poetry,  and  what  has  been  the  extent  of  their 
literary  influence?  The  dust  of  controversy  has  long 
since  settled,  and  what  has  its  subsidence  made  visible? 
My  own  belief  is  that  the  Rowley  poems  are  interest- 
ing principally  as  literary  curiosities — the  work  of  an 
infant  phenomenon — and  that  they  have  little  impor- 
tance in  themselves,  or  as  models  and  inspirations  to 
later  poets.  I  cannot  help  thinking  that,  upon  this 
subject,  many  critics  have  lost  their  heads.  Malone, 
e.  g.,  pronounced  Chatterton  the  greatest  genius  that 
England  had  produced  since  Shakspere.  Professor 
Masson  permits  himself  to  say:  "These  antique 
poems  of  Chatterton  are  perhaps  as  worthy  of  being 
read  consecutively  as  many  portions  of  the  poetry  of 
Byron,  Shelley,  or  Keats.  There  are  passages  in 
them,  at  least,  quite  equal  to  any  to  be  found  in  these 
poets."*  Mr.  Gosse  seems  to  me  much  nearer  the 
truth:  "Our  estimate  of  the  complete  originality  of 
the  Rowley  poems  must  be  tempered  by  a  recollection 
of  the  existence  of  *  The  Castle  of  Otranto '  and 
'The  Schoolmistress,'  of  the  popularity  of  Percy's 
'Reiiques'  and  the  'Odes'  of  Gray,  and  of  the 
revival  of  a  taste  for  Gothic  literature  and  art  which 
dates  from  Chatterton's  infancy.  Hence  the  claim 
which  has  been  made  for  Chatterton  as  the  father  of 
the  romantic  school,  and  as  having  mfluenced  the  actual 

*"  Chatterton.     A  Story  of  the  Year   1770,"  by  David  Masson, 
London,  1874. 


Thomas  Chatterton.  363 

style  of  Coleridge  and  Keats,  though  supported  with 
great  ability,  appears  to  be  overcharged.  So  also  the 
positive  praise  given  to  the  Rowley  poems,  as  artistic 
productions  full  of  rich  color  and  romantic  melody,  may 
be  deprecated  without  any  refusal  to  recognize  these 
qualities  in  measure.  There  are  frequent  flashes  of 
brilliancy  in  Chatterton,  and  one  or  two  very  perfectly 
sustained  pieces;  but  the  main  part  of  his  work,  if 
rigorously  isolated  from  the  melodramatic  romance  of 
his  career,  is  surely  found  to  be  rather  poor  reading, 
the  work  of  a  child  of  exalted  genius,  no  doubt,  yet 
manifestly  the  work  of  a  child  all  through."  * 

Let  us  get  a  little  closer  to  the  Rowley  poems,  as 
they  stand  in  Mr.  Skeat's  edition,  stripped  of  their  sham- 
antique  spelling  and  with  their  language  modernized 
wherever  possible;  and  we  shall  find,  I  think,  that, 
tried  by  an  absolute  standard,  they  are  markedly 
inferior  not  only  to  true  mediseval  work  like  Chaucer's 
poems  and  the  English  and  Scottish  ballads,  but  also 
to  the  best  modern  work  conceived  in  the  same  spirit: 
to  "Christabel"  and  "The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,"  and 
"  Jock  o'  Hazeldean  "  and  ''  Sister  Helen,"  and  "  The 
Haystack  in  the  Flood."  The  longest  of  the  Rowley 
poems  is  "Aella,"  "a  tragycal  enterlude  or  dis- 
coorseynge  tragedie "  in  147  stanzas,  and  generally 
regarded  as  Chatterton's  masterpiece,  f  The  scene  of 
this   tragedy  is  Bristol  and  the  neighboring  Watchet 

*  "  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,"  p.  334. 

f  A  recent  critic,  the  Hon.  Roden  Noel  ("  Essays  on  Poetry  and 
Poets,"  London,  i386),  thinks  that  "'Aella'  is  a  drama  worthy  of 
the  Elizabethans  "  (p.  44).  "  As  to  the  Rowley  series,"  as  a  whole, 
he  does  "not  hesitate  to  say  that  they  contain  some  of  the  finest 
poetry  in  our  language"  (p.  39).  The  choric  "Ode  to  Freedom" 
in  "  Goddwyn  "  appears  to  Mr.  Noel   to  be  the  original  of  a  much 


364  c/^  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

Mead;  the  period,  during  the  Danish  invasions.  The 
hero  is  the  warden  of  Bristol  Castle.*  While  he  is 
absent  on  a  victorious  campaign  against  the  Danes,  his 
bride,  Bertha,  is  decoyed  from  home  by  his  treacherous 
lieutenant,  Celmond,  who  is  about  to  ravish  her  in  the 
forest,  when  he  is  surprised  and  killed  by  a  band  of 
marauders.  Meanwhile  Aella  has  returned  home,  and, 
finding  that  his  wife  has  fled,  stabs  himself  mortally. 
Bertha  arrives  in  time  to  hear  his  dying  speech  and 
make  the  necessary  explanations,  and  then  dies  herself 
on  the  body  of  her  lord.  It  will  be  seen  that  the  plot 
is  sufficiently  melodramatic;  the  sentiments  and  dia- 
logue are  entirely  modern,  when  translated  out  of 
Rowleian  into  English.  The  verse  is  a  modified  form 
of  the  Spenserian,  a  ten-line  stanza  which  Mr.  Skeat 
says  is  an  invention  of  Chatterton  and  a  striking 
instance  of  his  originality.f  It  answers  very  well  in 
descriptive  passages  and  soliloquies;  not  so  well  in 
the  "  discoorseynge  "  parts.  As  this  is  Chatterton's 
favorite  stanza,  in  which  "The  Battle  of  Hastings," 
"Goddwyn,"  "English  Metamorphosis  "and  others  of 
the  Rowley  series  are  written,  an  example  of  it  may  be 
cited  here,  from  "Aella." 

Scene,  Bristol.     Celmond,  alone. 
The  world  is  dark  with  night ;  the  winds  are  still, 
Faintly  the  moon  her  pallid  light  makes  gleam; 
The  risen  sprites  the  silent  churchyard  fill, 

admired  passage  in  "  Childe  Harold,"  in  which  war  is  personified, 
"  and  at  any  rate  is  finer  "  ! 

*  See  in  Wm.  Ilowitt's  "  Homes  of  the  Poets,"  Vol.  I.  pp.  264-307, 
the  description  of  a  drawing  of  this  building  in  1138,  done  by  Chatter- 
ton  and  inserted  in  Barrett's  "  History." 

■j-  For  some  remarks  on  Chatterton's  metrical  originality,  see 
"Ward's  English  Poets,"  Vol.  III.  pp.  400-403.  ^ 


Thomas  Chatterton.  365 

With  elfin  fairies  joining  in  the  dream  ; 
The  forest  shineth  with  the  silver  leme  ; 
Now  may  my  love  be  sated  in  its  treat  ; 
Upon  the  brink  of  some  swift  running  stream. 
At  the  sweet  banquet  I  will  sweetly  eat. 
This  is  the  house  ;  quickly,  ye  hinds,  appear. 

Enter  a  servant. 
Cel.     Go  tell  to  Bertha  straight,  a  stranger  waiteth  here. 

The  Rowley  poems  include,  among  other  things, 
a  number  of  dramatic  or  quasi-dramatic  pieces, 
"Goddwyn,"  ''The  Tournament,"  "The  Parliament 
of  Sprites";  the  narrative  poem  of  "The  Battle  of 
Hastings,"  and  a  collection  of  "  eclogues."  These  are 
all  in  long-stanza  forms,  mostly  in  the  ten-lined  stanza. 
"  English  Metamorphosis  "  is  an  imitation  of  apassage 
in  "The  Faerie  Queene,"  (book  ii.  canto  x.  stanzas 
5-19).  "The  Parliament  of  Sprites  "  is  an  interlude 
played  by  Carmelite  friars  at  William  Canynge's  house 
on  the  occasion  of  the  dedication  of  St.  Mary  Red- 
cHffe's.  One  after  another  the  aiitichi  spiriti  doletitt 
rise  up  and  salute  the  new  edifice:  Nimrod  and  the 
Assyrians,  Anglo-Saxon  ealdormen  and  Norman  knights 
templars,  and  citizens  of  ancient  Bristol.  Among 
others,  "  Elle's  sprite  speaks  ": 

"  Were  I  once  more  cast  in  a  mortal  frame, 
To  hear  the  chantry-song  sound  in  mine  ear, 
To  hear  the  masses  to  our  holy  dame, 
To  view  the  cross-aisles  and  the  arches  fair  ! 
Through  the  half-hidden  silver-twinkling  glare 
Of  yon  bright  moon  in  foggy  maatles  dressed, 
I  must  content  this  building  to  aspere,* 
Whilst  broken  clouds  the  holy  sight  arrest  ; 
Till,  as  the  nights  grow  old,  I  fly  the  light. 
Oh  !  were  I  man  again,  to  see  the  sight  !  " 

*Look  at. 


366  <tA  History  of  English  '^manticism. 

Perhaps  the  most  engaging  of  the  Rowley  poems 
are  "An  Excelente  Balade  of  Charitie,"  written  in  the 
rhyme  royal;  and  "The  Bristowe  Tragedie,"  in  the 
common  ballad  stanza,  and  said  by  Tyrwhitt  to  be 
founded  on  an  historical  fact :  the  execution  at  Bristol, 
in  1461,  of  Sir  Baldwin  Fulford,  who  fought  on  the 
Lancastrian  side  in  the  Wars  of  the  Roses.  The  best 
quality  in  Chatterton's  verse  is  its  unexpectedness, — 
sudden  epithets  or  whole  lines,  of  a  wild  and  artless 
sweetness, — which  goes  far  to  explain  the  fascination 
that  he  exercised  over  Coleridge  and  Keats.  I  mean 
such  touches  as  these: 

' '  Once  as  I  dozing  in  the  witch-hour  lay. " 

"  Brown  as  the  filbert  dropping  from  the  shell." 

''  Mygorme  emblanched  with  the  comfreie  plant." 

"  Where  thou  may'st  here  the  sweete  night-lark  chant, 
Or  with  some  mocking  brooklet  sweetly  glide."  % 

"  Upon  his  bloody  carnage-house  he  lay, 
Whilst  his  long  shield  did  gleam  with  the  sun's  rising  ray." 

"  The  red  y-painted  oars  from  the  black  tide, 
Carved  with  devices  rare,  do  shimmering  rise." 

"  As  elfin  fairies,  when  the  moon  shines  bright, 
In  little  circles  dance  upon  the  green  ; 
All  living  creatures  fly  far  from  their  sight, 
Nor  by  the  race  of  destiny  be  seen  ; 
For  what  he  be  that  elfin  fairies  strike. 
Their  souls  will  wander  to  King  Offa's  dyke." 

The  charming  wildness  of  Chatterton's  imagination 
— which  attracted  the  notice  of  that  strange,  visionary 
genius  William  Blake  * — is  perhaps  seen  at  its  best  in 

*  Blake  was  an  early  adherent  of  the  "  Gothic  artists  wh^uilt  the 
Cathedrals  in  the  so-called  Dark  Ages   ...   of  whom  the  world  was 


i 


Thomas  Chatter  ton.  367 

one  of  the  minstrel  songs  in  ''Aella."  This  is  ob- 
viously an  echo  of  Ophelia's  song  in  "Hamlet,"  but 
Chatterton  gives  it  a  weird  turn  of  his  own: 

"  Hark  !  the  raven  flaps  his  wing 
In  the  briared  dell  below  ; 
Hark  !  the  death-owl  loud  doth  sing 
To  the  nightmares,  as  they  go. 
My  love  is  dead. 
Gone  to  his  death-bed 
All  under  the  willow  tree. 

"  See  the  white  moon  shines  on  high,* 
Whiter  is  my  true-love's  shroud, 
Whiter  than  the  morning  sky, 
Whiter  than  the  evening  cloud. 
My  love  is  dead,"  etc. 

It  remains  to  consider  briefly  the  influence  of  Chatter- 
ton's  life  and  writings  upon  his  contemporaries  and 
successors  in  the  field  of  romantic  poetry.  The 
dramatic  features  of  his  personal  career  drew,  natu- 
rally, quite  as  much  if  not  more  attention  than  his 
literary  legacy  to  posterity.  It  was  about  nine  years 
after  his  death  that  a  clerical  gentleman,  Sir  Herbert 
Croft,  went  to  Bristol  to  gather  materials  for  a  biog- 
raphy. He  talked  with  Barrett  and  Catcott,  and  with 
many  of  the  poet's  schoolmates  and  fellow-townsmen, 
and  visited  his  mother  and  sister,  who  told  him  anec- 
dotes of  the  marvelous  boy's  childhood  and  gave  him 

not  worthy."  Mr.  Rossetti  has  pointed  out  his  obligations  to  Ossian 
and  possibly  to  "  The  Castle  of  Otranto."  See  Blake's  poems 
"  Fair  Eleanor"  and  "Gwin,  King  of  Norway." 

*  Chatterton's  sister  testifies  that  he  had  the  romantic  habit  of 
sitting  up  all  night  and  writing  by  moonlight.  Cambridge  Ed. 
p.  Ixi. 


368  A  History  of  English  'T^manticism. 

some  of  his  letters.  Croft  also  traced  Chatterton's 
footsteps  in  London,  where  he  interviewed,  among 
others,  the  coroner  who  had  presided  at  the  inquest 
over  the  suicide's  body.  The  result  of  these  inquiries 
he  gave  to  the  world  in  a  book  entitled  "Love  and 
Madness"  (1780).*  Southey  thought  that  Croft  had 
treated  Mrs.  Chatterton  shabbily,  in  making  her  no 
pecuniary  return  from  the  profits  of  his  book;  and 
arraigned  him  publicly  for  this  in  the  edition  of 
Chatterton's  works  which  he  and  Joseph  Cottle — both 
native  Bristowans — published  in  three  volumes  in 
1803.  This  was  at  first  designed  to  be  a  subscription 
edition  for  the  benefit  of  Chatterton's  mother  and 
sister,  but,  the  subscriptions  not  being  numerous 
enough,  it  was  issued  in  the  usual  way,  through  ''the 
trade." 

It  was  in  1795,  just  a  quarter  of  a  century  after 
Chatterton's  death,  that  Southey  and  Coleridge  were 
married  in  St.  Mary  Redclifie's  Church  to  the  Misses 
Edith  and  Sara  Fricker.  Coleridge  was  greatly 
interested  in  Chatterton.  In  his  "  Lines  on  Observ- 
ing a  Blossom  on  the  First  of  February,  1796,"  he 
compares  the  flower  to 

"  Bristowa's  bard,  the  wondrous  boy, 
An  amaranth  which  earth  seemed  scarce  to  own, 
Blooming  'mid  poverty's  drear  wintry  waste." 

And  a  little  earlier  than  this,  when  meditating  his 
pantisocracy  scheme  with  Southey  and  Lovell,  he  had 
addressed  the  dead  poet  in  his  indignant  "  Monody 
on   the    Death    of    Chatterton,"    associatUg    him    in 

*  Other  standard  lives  of  Chatterton  are  those  by  Gregory,  1789, 
(reprinted  and  prefixed  to  the  Southey  and  Cottle  edition):  Dix, 
1837  ;  and  Wilson,  1869. 


Thomas  Chatter  ton.  369 

imagination   with    the    abortive   community   on    the 
Susquehannah; 

"O  Chatterton,  that  thou  wert  yet  alive  ! 

Sure  thou  would'st  spread  thy  canvas  to  the  gale, 
And  love  with  us  the  tinkling  team  to  drive 
O'er  peaceful  freedom's  undivided  dale  ; 
And  we  at  sober  eve  would  round  thee  throng. 
Hanging  enraptured  on  thy  stately  song, 
And  greet  with  smiles  the  young-eyed  poesy 
All  deftly  masked  as  hoar  antiquity.    .    . 
Yet  will  I  love  to  follow  the  sweet  dream 
Where  Susquehannah  pours  his  untamed  stream  ; 
And  on  some  hill,  whose  forest-frowning  side 
Waves  o'er  the  murmurs  of  his  calmer  tide, 
Will  raise  a  solemn  cenotaph  to  thee, 
Sweet  harper  of  time-shrouded  minstrelsy." 

It  might  be  hard  to  prove  that  the  Rowley  poems 
had*#ery  much  to  do  with  giving  shape  to  Coleridge's 
own  poetic  output.  Doubtless,  without  them, 
"Christabel,"  and  "The  Ancient  Mariner,"  and 
**The  Darke  Ladye  "  would  still  have  been;  and  yet 
it  is  possible  that  they  might  not  have  been  just  what 
they  are.  In  "The  Ancient  Mariner"  there  is  the 
ballad  strain  of  the  "  Reliques,"  but  plus  something  of 
Chatterton's.     In  such  lines  as  these: 

"  The  bride  hath  paced  into  the  hall. 
Red  as  a  rose  is  she  : 
Nodding  their  heads  before  her,  goes 
The  merry  minstrelsy;  " 


11 


or  as  these: 


"  The  wedding  guest  here  beat  his  breast, 
For  he  heard  the  loud  bassoon  :  " 


37°  <iA  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

one  catches  a  far-away  reverberation  from  certain 
stanzas  of  "  The  Bristowe  Tragedie:  "  this,  e.  g., 

"  Before  him  went  the  council-men 
In  scarlet  robes  and  gold, 
And  tassels  spangling  in  the  sun, 
Much  glorious  to  behold  ;  " 

and  this: 

"  In  different  parts  a  godly  psalm 
Most  sweetly  they  did  chant : 
Behind  their  backs  six  minstrels  came, 
Who  tuned  the  strung  bataunt."  * 

Among  all  the  young  poets  of  the  generation  that 
succeeded  Chatterton,  there  was  a  tender  feeling  of 
comradeship  with  the  proud  and  passionate  boy,  and 
a  longing  to  admit  him  of  their  crew.  Byron,  indeed, 
said  that  he  was  insane;  but  Shelley,  in  "Adonais," 
classes  him  with  Keats  among  "the  inheritors  of  unful- 
filled renown."  Lord  Houghton  testifies  that  Keats 
had  a  prescient  sympathy  with  Chatterton  in  his  early 
death.  He  dedicated  "  Endymion  "  to  his  memory. 
In  his  epistle  "To  George  Felton  Mathew,"  he  asks 
him  to  help  him  find  a  place 

"  Where  we  may  soft  humanity  put  on, 
And  sit,  and  rhyme,  and  think  on  Chatterton."  f 

Keats  said  that  he  always  associated  the  season  of 
autumn  with  the  memory  of  Chatterton.     He  asserted, 

*  Rowleian  :  there  is  no  such  instrument  known  unto  men.  The 
romantic  love  of  color  is  observable  in  thisi)oem,  and  is  strong  every- 
where in  Chatterton.  « 

f  See  also  the  sonnet  :  "  O  Chatterton,  hov/  very  sad  thy  fate" — ■ 
given  in  Lord  Houghton's  memoir.  ' '  Life  and  Letters  of  John 
Keats " :  By  R.  Monckton  Milnes,  p.  20  (American  Edition, 
New  York,   1848). 


Thomas  Cbattertoii.  371 

somewhat  oddly,  that  he  was  the  purest  writer  in  the 
English  language  and  used  "  no  French  idiom  or  parti- 
cles, like  Chaucer,"  In  a  letter  from  Jane  Porter  to 
Keats  about  the  reviews  of  his  "  Endymion,"  she  wrote: 
"  Had  Chatterton  possessed  sufficient  manliness  of 
mind  to  know  the  magnanimity  of  patience,  and  been 
aware  that  great  talents  have  a  commission  from 
Heaven,  he  would  not  have  deserted  his  post,  and  his 
name  might  have  been  paged  with  Milton." 

Keats  was  the  poetic  child  of  Spenser,  but  some 
traits  of  manner — hard  to  define,  though  not  to  feel — 
he  inherited  from  Chatterton.  In  his  unfinished 
poem,  "The  Eve  of  St.  Mark,"  there  is  a  Rowleian 
accent  in  the  passage  imitative  of  early  English,  and 
in  the  loving  description  of  the  old  volume  of  saints' 
legends  whence  it  is  taken,  with  its 

"  — pious  poesies 
Written  in  smallest  crow-quill  size 
Beneath  the  text." 

And  we  cannot  but  think  of  the  shadow  of  St.  Mary 
Redcliffe  falling  across  another  young  life,  as  we 
read  how 

"  Bertha  was  a  maiden  fair 

Dwelling  in  th*  old  Minster-square  ; 
From  her  fireside  she  could  see, 
Sidelong,  its  rich  antiquity, 
Far  as  the  Bishop's  garden-wall  "  ; 

and  of  the  footfalls  that  pass  the  echoing  minster-gate, 
and  of  the  clamorous  daws  that  fall  asleep  in  the 
ancient  belfry  to  the  sound  of  the  drowsy  chimes. 
Rossetti,  in  so  many  ways  a  continuator  of  Keats' 
artistry,  devoted  to  Chatterton  the  first  of  his  sonnet- 


372  ^  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

group,    ** Five  English   Poets,"*  of  which  the  sestet 
runs  thus: 

"  Thy  nested  home-loves,  noble  Chatterton  ; 
The  angel-trodden  stair  thy  soul  could  trace 
Up  Redcliffe's  spire  ;  and  in  the  world's  armed  space 

Thy  gallant  sword-play: — these  to  many  an  one 

Are  sweet  for  ever  ;  as  thy  grave  unknown 
And  love-dream  of  thine  unrecorded  face," 

The  story  of  Chatterton's  Hfe  found  its  way  into 
fiction  and  upon  the  stage.  Alfred  de  Vigny,  one  of 
the  French  romanticists,  translator  of  *' Othello"  and 
"The  Merchant  of  Venice,"  introduced  it  as  an  epi- 
sode into  his  romance,  "  Stello  ou  les  Diables  Bleus," 
afterward  dramatized  as  "Chatterton,"  and  first  played 
at  Paris  on  February  12,  1835,  with  great  success.  De 
Vigny  made  a  love  tragedy  out  of  it,  inventing  a 
sweetheart  for  his  hero,  in  the  person  of  Kitty  Bell, 
a  role  which  became  one  of  Madame  Dorval's  chief 
triumphs.  On  the  occasion  of  the  revival  of  De  Vigny's 
drama  in  December,  1857,  Theophile  Gautier  gave, 
in  the  MonHeur,\  some  reminiscences  of  its  first  per- 
formance, twenty-two  years  before. 

"  The  parterre  before  which  Chatterton  declaimed 
was  full  of  pale,  long-haired  youths,  who  firmly  be- 
lieved that  there  was  no  other  worthy  occupation  on 
earth  but  the  making  of  verses  or  of  pictures — art,  as 
they  called  it;  and  who  looked  upon  the  bourgeois 
with  a  disdain  to  which  the  disdain  of  the  Heidelberg 
or  Jena 'fox  '  for  the 'philistine  '  hardly  approaches.   ,   . 

*  Chatterton,  Blake,  Coleridge,  Keats,  Shelley.     "The  absolutely 
miraculous  Chatterton,"  Rossetti  elsewhere  styles  him. 
\  "  Histoire  du  Romantisme,"  pp.  153-54. 


Thomas  Chatterton.  373 

As  to  money,  no  one  thought  of  it.  More  than  one, 
as  in  that  assembly  of  impossible  professions  which 
Theodore  de  Banville  describes  with  so  resigned  an 
irony,  could  have  cried  without  falsehood  *  I  am  a 
lyric  poet  and  I  live  by  my  profession.'  One  v,  ho  has 
not  passed  through  that  mad,  ardent,  over-excited 
but  generous  epoch,  cannot  imagine  to  what  a  forget- 
fulness  of  material  existence  the  intoxication,  or,  if 
you  prefer,  infatuation  of  art  pushed  the  obscure  and 
fragile  victims  who  would  rather  have  died  than 
renounce  their  dream.  One  actually  heard  in  the 
night  the  crack  of  solitary  pistols.  Judge  of  the 
effect  produced  in  such  an  environment  by  M.  Alfred 
Vigny's  'Chatterton';  to  which,  if  you  would  com- 
prehend it,  you  must  restore  the  contemporary  atmos- 
phere." * 

*  "  Chatterton,"  a  drama  by  Jones  and  Herman,  was  played  at  the 
Princess'  Theater,  London,  May  22,  1884. 


CHAPTER   XL 
Zbc  ©erman  u;ributacs. 

Up  to  the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth  century  the 
romantic  movement  in  Great  Britain  had  been  self- 
developed  and  independent  of  foreign  influence,  except 
for  such  stimulus  as  it  had  found,  once  and  again,  in 
the  writings  of  continental  scholars  like  Sainte  Palaye 
and  Mallet.  But  now  the  English  literary  current 
began  to  receive  a  tributary  stream  from  abroad.  A 
change  had  taken  place  in  the  attitude  of  the  German 
mind  which  corresponds  quite  closely  to  that  whose 
successive  steps  we  have  been  following.  In  Ger- 
many, French  classicism  had  got  an  even  firmer  hold 
than  in  England.  It  is  well-known  that  Frederick  the 
Great  (1740-86)  regarded  his  mother-tongue  as  a  bar- . 
barous  dialect,  hardly  fit  for  literary  use.  In  his  own 
writings,  prose  and  verse,  he  invariably  employed 
French;  and  he  boasted  to  Gottsched  that  from  his 
youth  up  he  had  not  read  a  German  book.* 

But  already  before  the  middle  of  the  century,  and 
just  about  the  time  of  the  publication  of  Thomson's 
"Seasons,"  the  so-called  Swiss  school,  under  the 
leadership  of  the  Ziiricher,  Johann  Jacob  Bodmer,  had 
begun  a  national  movement  and  an  attack  upon  Gallic 
influences.     Bodmer   fought    under    Milton's   banner, 

*  Scherer's  "  History  of  German  Literature,"  Conybeare's  Transla- 
tion, Vol.  II.  p.  26. 

374 


The  German  Tributary.  375 

and  in  the  preface  to  his  prose  translation  of  **  Para- 
dise Lost  "  (1732),  he  praised  Shakspere  as  the  English 
Sophocles.  In  his  "  Abhandlung  von  dem  Wunder- 
baren "  ("Treatise  on  the  Marvelous,"  1740)  he 
asserted  the  claims  of  freedom,  nature,  and  the  inspired 
imagination  against  the  rules  of  French  critics,  very 
much  as  the  Wartons  and  Bishop  Hurd  did  a  few  years 
later  in  England.  Deutscheit,  Volkspoesie,  the  German 
past,  the  old  Teutonic  hero-age,  with  the  Kaiserzeit 
and  the  Middle  Ages  in  general,  soon  came  into 
fashion.  "As  early  as  1748  Bodmer  had  published 
specimens  from  the  Minnesingers,  in  1757  he  had 
brought  out  a  part  of  the  Nibelungenlied,  in  1758  and 
1759  a  more  complete  collection  of  the  Minnesingers, 
and  till  1781,  till  just  before  his  death,  he  continued 
to  produce  editions  of  the  Middle  High-German 
poems.  Another  Swiss  writer.  Christian  Heinrich 
Mujler,  a  pupil  of  Bodmer's  .  .  .  published  in  1784 
and  1785  the  whole  of  the  Nibelungenlied  and  the 
most  important  of  the  chivalrous  epics.  Lessing,  in 
his  preface  to  Gleim's  'War-songs,'  called  attention 
to  the  Middle  High-German  poets,  of  whom  he  con- 
tinued to  be  throughout  his  life  an  ardent  admirer. 
Justus  Moser  took  great  interest  in  the  Minnesingers. 
About  the  time  when  'Gotz'  appeared,  this  enthu- 
siasm for  early  German  poetry  was  at  its  strongest, 
and  Burger,  Voss,  Miller,  and  Holtz  wrote  Minne- 
songs,  in  which  they  imitated  the  old  German  lyric 
poets.  In  1773  Gleim  published  'Poems  after  the 
Minnesingers,'  and  in  1779  '  Poems  after  Walther  von 
der  Vogelweide.'  Some  enthusiasts  had  already 
hailed  the  Nibelungenlied  as  the  German  Iliad, 
and  Burger,  who  vied  hard  with  the  rest,  but  without 


376  cA  History  of  English  l^omanticism. 

much  success,  in  turning  Homer  into  German,  insisted 
on  dressing  up  the  Greek  heroes  a  little  in  the 
Nibelungen  style.  He  and  a  few  other  poets  loved  to 
give  their  ballads  a  chivalrous  character.  Fritz  Stol- 
berg  wrote  the  beautiful  song  of  a  German  boy, 
beginning,  '  Mein  Arm  wird  stark  und  gross  mein 
Muth,  gib,  Vater,  mir  ein  Schwert';  and  the  song  of 
the  old  Swabian  knight — '  Sohn,  da  hast  du  meinen 
Speer;  meinem  Arm  wird  er  zu  schwer. '  Lessing's 
'Nathan,'  too,  appealed  to  this  enthusiasm  for  the 
times  of  chivalry,  and  must  have  strengthened  the 
feeling.  An  historian  like  the  Swiss,  Johannes 
Miiller,  began  to  show  the  Middle  Ages  in  a  fairer 
light,  and  even  to  ascribe  great  merits  to  the  Papacy. 
But  in  doing  so,  Johannes  Miiller  was  only  following 
in  Herder's  steps.  Herder  .  .  .  had  written  against 
the  self-conceit  of  his  age,  its  pride  in  its  enlighten- 
ment and  achievements.  He  found  in  the  Middle 
Ages  the  realization  of  his  aesthetic  ideas,  namely, 
strong  emotion,  stirring  life  and  action,  everything 
guided  by  feeling  and  instinct,  not  by  morbid  thought ; 
religious  ardor  and  chivalrous  honor,  boldness  in  love 
and  strong  patriotic  feeling."  * 

When  the  founders  of  a  truly  national  literature  in 
Germany  cut  loose  from  French  moorings,  they  had 
an  English  pilot  aboard;  and  in  the  translations  from 
Germ.an  romances,  dramas,  and  ballads  that  were 
made  by  Scott,  Coleridge,  Taylor,  Lewis,  and  others, 
English  literature  was  merely  taking  back  with  usury 
what  it  had  lent  its  younger  sister.  Mention  has 
already  been  made  of  Burger's  and  Herder's  render- 
ings from  Percy's  "  Reliques,"  f  an  edition  of  which 

*Scherer,  Vol.  II.  pp.  123-24.  f  See  anU,  pp.  300-301. 


7he  German  Tributary.  377 

was  published  at  Gottingen  in  1767;  as  well  as  of  the 
strong  excitement  aroused  in  Germany  by  MacPher- 
son's  ''Ossian."*  This  last  found— besides  the 
Viennese  Denis— another  translator  in  Fritz  Stol- 
bergf,  who  carried  his  mediaevalism  so  far  as  to  join 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  1800.  Klopstock's 
"  Kriegslied,"  written  as  early  as  1749^  was  in  the 
meter  of  "Chevy  Chase,"  which  Klopstock  knew 
through  Addison's  Spectator  papers.  Through  Mallet, 
the  Eddaic  literature  made  an  impression  in  Germany 
as  in  England;  and  Gersternberg's  "  Gedicht  eines 
Skalden"  (1766),  one  of  the  first-fruits  of  the  German 
translation  of  the  "  Histoire  de  Dannemarc,"  preceded 
by  two  years  the  publication — though  not  the  composi- 
tion— of  Gray's  poems  from  the  Norse. 

But  the  spirit  which  wrought  most  mightily  upon  the 
new  German  literature  was  Shakspere's.  During  the 
/f^riod  of  French  culture  there  had  been  practically  no 
knowledge  of  Shakspere  in  Germany.  In  1741  Chris- 
tian von  Borck,  Prussian  ambassador  to  London,  had 
translated  "Julius  Caesar."  This  was  followed,  a  few 
years  later,  by  a  version  of  "Romeo  and  Juliet."  In 
1762-66  Wieland  translated,  in  whole  or  in  part, 
twenty-two  of  Shakspere's  plays.  His  translation  was 
in  prose  and  has  been  long  superseded  by  the  Tieck- 
Schlegel  translation  (1797-1801-1810).  Goethe  first 
made  acquaintance  with  Shakspere,  when  a  student 
at  Leipsic,  through  the  detached  passages  given  in 
"  Dodd's  Beauties  of  Shakspere."  f     He  afterward  got 

*  See  ante,  pp.  337-38. 

f'The  Beauties  of  Shakspere.  Regularly  selected  from  each 
Play.  With  a  general  index.  Digesting  them  under  proper  heads." 
By  the  Rev.  Wm.  Dodd,  1752. 


378  iA  History  of  English  T^omanticism. 

hold  of  Wieland's  translation,  and  when  he  went  to 
Strassburg  he  fell  under  the  influence  of  Herder,  who 
inspired  him  with  his  own  enthusiasm  for  "  Ossian," 
and  the  Volkslieder,  and  led  him  to  study  Shakspere 
in  the  original. 

Young  Germany  fastened  upon  and  appropriated  the 
great  English  dramatist  with  passionate  conviction. 
He  became  an  object  of  worship,  an  article  of  faith. 
The  Shakspere  cultus  dominated  the  whole  Sturm-  und 
Drangperoide.  The  stage  domesticated  him :  the  poets 
imitated  him;  the  critics  exalted  him  into  the  type  and 
representative  {U'7-bild)  of  Germanic  art,  as  opposed 
to  and  distinguished  from  the  art  of  the  Latin  races, 
founded  upon  a  false  reproduction  of  the  antique.*  It 
was  a  recognition  of  the  essential  kinship  between  the 
two  separated  branches  of  the  great  Teutonic  stock. 
The  enthusiastic  young  patriots  of  the  Gottinger 
Hain, — who  hated  everything  French  and  called  each 
other  by  the  names  of  ancient  bards, — accustomed 
themselves  to  the  use  of  Shaksperian  phrases  in  con- 
versation; and  on  one  occasion  celebrated  the 
dramatist's  birthday  so  uproariously  that  they  were 
pounced  upon  by  the  police  and  spent  the  night  in  the 
lockup.     In  Goethe's  circle  at  Strassburg,  which  num- 

*  "  Es  war  nicht  bios  die  Tiefe  der  Poesie,  welche  sie  zu  Shakespeare 
zog,  es  war  ebenso  sehr  das  sichere  Gefiihl,  das  hier  germanische 
Art  und  Kunst  sei." — Hettner's  Geschichte  der  deutschen  Litera- 
^w.  S'S-I-  s.  51.  "  1st  zu  sagen,  dass  die  Abwendung  von  den 
Franzosen  zu  den  stammverwandten  Englandern  ...  in  ihrem 
geschichtlichen  Ursprung  und  Wachsthum  wesentlich  die  Auflehnung 
des  erstarkten  germanischen  Volksnaturells  gegen  die  erdriickende 
Uebermacht  der  romanischen  Formenwelt  war," etc. — Ibid,  s.  47.  See 
also,  ss.  389-95,  for  a  review  of  the  interpretation  of  the  great 
Shaksperian  roles  by  German  actors  like  Schroder  and  Fleck. 


The  German  Tributary.  379 

bered,  among  others,  Lenz,  Klinger,  and  H.  L.  Wag- 
ner, this  Shakspere  mania  was  de  rigueur.  Lenz, 
particularly,  who  translated  "  Love's  Labour's  Lost," 
excelled  in  whimsical  imitations  of  *'  such  conceits  as 
clownage  keeps  in  pay."*  Upon  his  return  to  Frank- 
fort, Goethe  gave  a  feast  in  Shakspere's  honor  at  his 
father's  house  (October  14,  17  71),  in  which  healths 
were  drunk  to  the  "Will  of  all  Wills,"  and  the  youth- 
ful host  delivered  an  extravagant  eulogy.  "The  first 
page  of  Shakspere's  that  I  read,"  runs  a  sentence  of 
this  oration,  "made  me  his  own  for  life,  and  when  I 
was  through  with  the  first  play,  I  stood  like  a  man 
born  blind,  to  whom  sight  has  been  given  by  an 
instant's  miracle.  I  had  a  most  living  perception  of 
the  fact  that  my  being  had  been  expanded  a  whole 
infinitude.  Everything  was  new  and  strange;  my  eyes 
ached  with  the  unwonted  light."  f 

Lessing,  in  his  onslaught  upon  the  French  theater 
i^  his  "  Hamburgische  Dramaturgie  "  (1767-69),  main- 
tained that  there  was  a  much  closer  agreement  between 
Sophocles  and  Shakspere  in  the  essentials  of  dramatic 
art  than  between  Sophocles  and  Racine  or  Voltaire 
in  their  mechanical  copies  of  the  antique.  In  their 
own  plays,  Lessing,  Goethe,  and  Schiller  all  took 
Shakspere  as  their  model.  But  while  beginning  with 
imitation,   they  came  in   time  to  work  freely  in  the 

*  "  Wirhoren  einen  Nachklang  jener  frohlichen  Unterhaltungen,  in 
denen  die  Freunde  sich  ganz  und  gar  in  Shakespear'schen  Wendungen 
und  Wortwitzen  ergingen,  in  seiner  Uebersetzung  von  Shakespeare's 
'  Love's  Labour's  Lost.'  " — Hettner,  s.  244. 

f  See  the  whole  oration  (in  Hettner,  s.  120,)  which  gives  a  most 
vivid  expression  of  the  impact  of  Shakspere  upon  the  newly  aroused 
mind  of  Germany. 


380  e^  History  of  English  'T^omanticistn. 

spirit  of  Shakspere  rather  than  in  his  manner.  Thus 
the  first  draught  of  Goethe's  "  Gotz  von  Berlichingen" 
conforms  in  all  externals  to  the  pattern  of  a  Shaks- 
perian  "history."  The  unity  of  action  went  over- 
board along  with  those  of  time  and  place;  the  scene 
was  shifted  for  a  monologue  of  three  lines  or  a 
dialogue  of  six;  tragic  and  comic  were  interwoven; 
the  stage  was  thronged  with  a  motley  variety  of 
figures,  humors,  and  conditions — knights,  citizens, 
soldiers,  horse-boys,  peasants;  there  was  a  court- 
jester;  songs  and  lyric  passages  were  interspersed; 
there  were  puns,  broad  jokes,  rant,  Elizabethan 
metaphors,  and  swollen  trunk-hose  hyperboles,  with 
innumerable  Shakesperian  reminiscences  in  detail. 
But  the  advice  of  Herder,  to  whom  he  sent  his  manu- 
script, and  the  example  of  Lessing,  whose  "  Emilia 
Galotti"had  just  appeared,  persuaded  Goethe  to  recast 
the  piece  and  give  it  a  more  independent  form. 

Scherer*says  that  the  pronunciamento  of  the  new 
national  movement  in  German  letters  was  the  '*  small, 
badly  printed  anonymous  book"  entitled  "Von 
Deutscher  Art  und  Kunst,  einige  fliegende  Blatter  " 
("Some  Loose  Leaves  about  German  Style  and  Art "), 
which  appeared  in  1773  and  contained  essays  by 
Justus  Moser,  who  "upheld  the  liberty  of  the  ancient 
Germans  as  a  vanished  ideal";  by  Johann  Gottfried 
Herder,  who  "celebrated  the  merits  of  popular  song, 
advocated  a  collection  of  the  German  Volkslieder, 
extolled  the  greatness  of  Shakspere,  and  prophesied 
the  advent  of  a  German  Shakspere";  and  Johann 
Wolfgang  Goethe,  who  praised  the  Strassburg  Minster 

*  "  German  Literature,"  Vol.  II.  pp.  82-83. 


The  German  Tributary.  381 

and  Gothic  architecture*  in  general,  and  "asserted 
that  art,  to  be  true,  must  be  characteristic.  The 
reform,  or  revolution,  which  this  little  volume 
announced  was  connected  with  hostility  to  France, 
and  with  a  friendly  attitude  toward  England.  .  . 
/This  great  movement  was,  in  fact,  a  revulsion  from  the 
'  spirit  of  Voltaire  to  that  of  Rousseau,  from  the  arti- 
ficiality of  society  to  the  simplicity  of  nature,  from 
doubt  and  rationalism  to  feeling  and  faith,  from 
a  priori  notions  f  to  history,  from  hard  and  fast 
aesthetic  rules  to  the  freedom  of  genius. '  Goethe's 
'Gotz'  was  the  first  revolutionary  symptom  which 
really  attracted  much  attention,  but  the  '  Fly-sheets 
on  German  Style  and  Art'  preceded  the  publication  of 
*  Gotz,'  as  a  kind  of  programme  or  manifesto."  Even 
Wieland,  the  mocking  and  French-minded,  the  man  of 
consummate  talent  but  shallow  genius,  the  representa- 
ffve  of  the  Aufkldriing  {Eclaircissement,  Illumination) 
was  carried  away  by  this  new  stream  of  tendency,  and 
saddled  his  hippogriff  for  a  ride  ins  alte  ronantische 
Land.  He  availed  himself  of  the  new  "Library  of 
Romance  "  which  Count  Tressan  began  publishing  in 
France  in  1775,  studied  Hans  Sachs  and  Hartmann 
von  Aue,  experimented  with  Old  German  meters,  and 
enriched  his  vocabulary  from  Old  German  sources. 
He  poetized  popular  fairy  tales,  chivalry  stories,  and 
motives  from  the  Arthurian  epos,  such  as  "  Gandalin  " 
and  "  Geron  der  Adeliche  "  ("Gyron  le  Courteois  "). 

* "  Unter  alien  Menschen  des  Achtzehnten  Jahrhunderts  war 
Goethe  wieder  der  Erste,  welcher  die  lang  verachtete  Herrlichkeit 
der  gothischen  Baukunst  empfand  und  erfasste." — Hettner,  3.3.1.,  s. 
120. 

f  Construirtes  Ideal. 


382  a/^  History  of  English  l^manticism. 

But  his  best  and  best-known  work  in  this  temper  was 
"  Oberon  "  (1780)  a  rich  composite  of  materials  from 
Chaucer,  "A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,"  and  the 
French  romance  of  '*Huon  of  Bordeaux."* 

From  this  outline — necessarily  very  imperfect  and 
largely  at  second  hand — of  the  course  of  the  German 
romantic  movement  in  the  eighteenth  century,  it  will 
nevertheless  appear  that  it  ran  parallel  to  the  English 
most  of  the  way.  In  both  countries  the  reaction  was 
against  the  Aufkldrung,  i.  e.,  against  the  rationalistic, 
prosaic,  skeptical,  common-sense  spirit  of  the  age, 
represented  in  England  by  deistical  writers  like 
Shaftesbury,  Mandeville,  Bolingbroke,  and  Tindal  in 
the  department  of  religious  and  moral  philosophy; 
and  by  writers  like  Addison,  Swift,  Prior,  and  Pope  in 
polite  letters;  and  represented  most  brilliantly  in  tne 
literatures  of  Europe  by  Voltaire.  In  opposition  to 
this  spirit,  an  effort  was  now  made  to  hark  back  to  the 
ages  of  faith;  to  recover  the  point  of  view  which 
created  mythology,  fairy  lore,  and  popular  supersti- 
tions; to  believe,  at  all  hazards,  not  only  in  God  and  the 
immortal  soul  of  man,  but  in  the  old-time  corollaries 
of  these  beliefs,  in  ghosts,  elves,  demons,  and  witches. 

In  both  countries,  too,  the  revolution,  as  it  con- 
cerned form,  was  a  break  with  French  classicism  and 
with  that  part  of  the  native  literature  which  had 
followed  academic  traditions.  Here  the  insurrection 
was  far  more  violent  in  Germany  than  in  England, f 

*Scherer,  II.  129-31.  "  Oberon "  was  englished  by  William 
Sotheby  in  1798. 

f  "  Vor  den  classischen  Dichtarten  fangt  mich  bald  an  zu  ekeln," 
wrote  Burger  in  1775.  "  Charakteristiken ":  von  Erich  Schmidt 
(Berlin,    1886)   s.  205.     "  O,  das   verwllnschte    Wort:    Klassisch! " 


V 


uX 


fy^nxAJl 


The  German  Tributary.  383 

partly  because  Gallic  influence  had  tyrannized  there 
more  completely  and  almost  to  the  supplanting  of  the 
vernacular  by  the  foreign  idiom,  for  literary  uses;  and  '^^  -i-^^- 
partly  because  Germany  had  nothing  to  compare  with 
the  shining  and  solid  achievements  of  the  Queen  Anne 
classics  in  England.  It  was  easy  for  the  new  school 
of  German  poets  and  critics  to  brush  aside  perriiques 
like  Opitz,  Gottsched,  and  Gellert — authors  of  the 
fourth  or  fifth  class.  But  Swift  and  Congreve,  and  '^- 
Pope  and  Fielding,  were  not  thus  to  be  disposed  of. 
We  have  noted  the  cautious,  respectful  manner  in 
which  such  innovators  as  Warton  and  Percy  ventured  /V^""^t^ 
to  question  Pope's  supremacy  and  to  recommend  older 
English  poets  to  the  attention  of  a  polite  age;  and  we 
have  seen  that  Horace  Walpole's  Gothic  enthusiasms 
were  not  inconsistent  with  literary  prejudices  more 
conservative  than  radical,  upon  the  whole.  In  Eng- 
land, again,  the  movement  began  with  imitations  of 
Spenser  and  Milton,  and,  gradually  only,  arrived  at 
the  resuscitation  of  Chaucer  and  mediaeval  poetry  and 
the  translation  of  Bardic  and  Scaldic  remains.  But  in 
Germany  there  was  no  Elizabethan  literature  to 
mediate  between  the  modern  mind  and  the  Middle 
Age,  and  so  the  Germans  resorted  to  England  and 
Shakspere  for  this. 
;  In  Germany,  as  in  England,  though  for  different 
\  reasons,  the  romantic  revival  did  not  culminate  until 
the  nineteenth  century,   until  the  appearance  of    the 

',   exclaims  Herder.     "  Dieses  Wort  wares,  das  alia  wahre  Bildung  nach 
j   den  Alten  als  noch  lebenden  Mustern  verdrangte.    .    .     Dies  Wort 

hat  manches  Genie  unter  einen   Schutt  von  Worten  vergraben.    .    . 

Es  hat  dem  Vaterland  bliihende  Fruchtbaume  entzogen!" — Hettner 

3.  3.  I.  s.  50, 


384  <^  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

Romantische  Schule  in  the  stricter  sense — of  Tieck, 
Novalis,  the  Schlegel  brothers,  Wackenroder,  Fouque, 
Von  Arnim,  Brentano,  and  Uhland.  In  England 
this  was  owing  less  to  arrested  development  than 
to  the  absence  of  genius.  There  the  forerunners  of 
Scott,  Coleridge,  and  Keats  were  writers  of  a  distinctly 
inferior  order:  Akenside,  Shenstone,  Dyer,  the  War- 
tons,  Percy,  Walpole,  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  "  Monk  " 
Lewis,  the  boy  Chatterton.  If  a  few  rise  above  this 
level,  like  Thomson,  Collins,  and  Gray,  the  slenderness 
of  their  performance,  and  the  somewhat  casual  nature 
of  their  participation  in  the  movement,  diminish  their 
relative  importance.  Gray's  purely  romantic  work 
belongs  to  the  last  years  of  his  life.  Collins'  derange- 
ment and  early  death  stopped  the  unfolding  of  many 
buds  of  promise  in  this  rarely  endowed  lyrist.  Thom- 
son, perhaps,  came  too  early  to  reach  any  more 
advanced  stage  of  evolution  than  Spenserism.  In 
Germany,  on  the  contrary,  the  pioneers  were  men  of 
the  highest  intellectual  stature,  Lessing,  Herder, 
Goethe,  Schiller.  But  there  the  movement  was 
checked  for  a  time  by  counter-currents,  or  lost  in 
broader  tides  of  literary  life.  English  romanticism 
was  but  one  among  many  contemporary  tendencies: 
sentimentalism,  naturalism,  realism.  German  ro- 
manticism was  simply  an  incident  of  the  Sturm-  und 
Drangperiode^  which  was  itself  but  a  temporary  phase  of 
the  swift  and  many-sided  unfolding  of  the  German  mind 
in  the  latter  half  of  the  last  century;  one  element  in 
the  great  intellectual  ferment  which  threw  off,  among 
other  products,  the  Kantian  philosophy,  the  "Lao- 
coon,"  "Faust,"  and  "  Wilhelm  Meister  "  ;  Winckel- 
mann's  "  Geschichte  der  Kunst  des  Alterthums  "  and 


The  German  Tributary.  385 

Schiller's  "Wallenstein"  and  "Wilhelm  Tell."  Men 
like  Goethe  and  Schiller  were  too  broad  in  their 
culture,  too  versatile  in  their  talents,  too  multifarious 
in  their  mental  activities  and  sympathies  to  be  classi- 
fied with  a  school.  The  temper  which  engendered 
"  Gotz  "  and  "Die  Rauber  "  was  only  a  moment  in 
the  history  of  their  Entwickelung ;  they  passed  on 
presently  into  other  regions  of  thought  and  art. 

In  Goethe  especially  there  ensued,  after  the  time 
of  his  Italienische  Reise,  a  reversion  to  the  classic; 
not  the  exploded  pseudo-classic  of  the  eighteenth- 
century  brand,  but  the  true  Hellenic  spirit  which 
expressed  itself  in  such  work  as  "  Iphigenie  auf 
Tauris,"  "  Hermann  und  Dorothea,"  and  the  "  Schone 
Helena"  and  "  Classische  Walpurgis-Nacht  "  episodes 
in  the  second  part  of  *'  Faust."  "  In  his  youth,"  says 
Scherer,  "a  love  for  the  historical  past  of  Germany 
had  seized  on  the  minds  of  many.  Imaginative 
writers  filled  the  old  Teutonic  forests  with  Bards  and 
Druids  and  cherished  an  enthusiastic  admiration  for 
Gothic  cathedrals  and  for  the  knights  of  the  Middle 
Ages  and  of  the  sixteenth  century.  .  .  In  Goethe's 
mature  years,  on  the  contrary,  the  interest  in  classical 
antiquity  dwarfed  all  other  sesthetic  interests,  and 
Germany  and  Europe  were  flooded  by  the  classical 
fashion  for  which  Winckelmann  had  given  the  first 
strong  impulse.  The  churches  became  ancient  tem- 
ples, the  mechanical  arts  strove  after  classical  forms, 
and  ladies  affected  the  dress  and  manners  of  Greek 
women.  The  leaders  of  German  poetry,  Goethe 
and  Schiller,  both  attained  the  summit  of  their  art  in 
the  imitation  of  classical  models."  *  Still  the  ground 
*  "German  Literature,"  Vol.  II.  p.  230. 


386  <iA  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

recovered  from  the  Middle  Age  was  never  again 
entirely  lost;  and  in  spite  of  this  classical  preposses- 
sion, Goethe  and  Schiller,  even  in  the  last  years  of  the 
century,  vied  with  one  another  in  the  composition  of 
romantic  ballads,  like  the  former's  "  Der  Erlkonig," 
*'  Der  Fischer,"  *'  Der  Todtentanz,"  and  "  Der  Zauber- 
lehrling,"  and  the  latter's  "  Ritter  Toggenburg,"  "  Der 
Kampf  mit  dem  Drachen,"  and  "  Der  Gang  nach  dem 
Eisenhammer." 

On  comparing  the  works  of  a  romantic  temper  pro- 
duced in  England  and  in  Germany  during  the  last 
century,  one  soon  becomes  aware  that,  though  the 
original  impulse  was  communicated  from  England, 
the  continental  movement  had  greater  momentum. 
The  Griitidlichkeit,  the  depth  and  thoroughness  of 
the  German  mind,  impels  it  to  base  itself  in  the  fine 
arts,  as  in  politics  and  religion,  on  foundation  prin- 
ciples; to  construct  for  its  practice  a  theoria,  an 
(Bsihetik.  In  the  later  history  of  German  romanticism, 
the  mediaeval  revival  in  letters  and  art  was  carried  out 
with  a  philosophic  consistency  into  other  domains  of 
thought  and  made  accessory  to  reactionary  statecraft 
and  theology,  to  Junkerism  and  Catholicism.  Mean- 
while, though  the  literary  movement  in  Germany  in 
the  eighteenth  century  did  not  quite  come  to  a  head, 
it  was  more  critical,  learned,  and  conscious  of  its  own 
purposes  and  methods  than  the  kindred  movement  in 
England.  The  English  mind,  in  the  act  of  creation, 
works  practically  and  instinctively.  It  seldom  seeks 
to  bring  questions  of  taste  or  art  under  the  domain  of 
scientific  laws.  During  the  classical  period  it  had 
accepted  its  standards  of  taste  from  France,  and  when 
it  broke  away  from  these,  it  did  so  upon  impulse  and 


The  German  Tributary.  387 

gave  either  no  reasons,  or  very  superficial  ones,  for  its 
new  departure.  The  elegant  dissertations  of  Hurd 
and  Percy,  and  the  Wartons,  seem  very  dilettantish 
when  set  beside  the  imposing  systems  of  aesthetics 
propounded  by  Kant,  Fichte,  and  Schelling;  or  beside 
thorough-going  Abhandlungen  like  the  "Laocoon," 
the  *' Hamburgische  Dramaturgic,"  Schiller's  treatise 
**  Ueber  naive  und  sentimentalische  Dichtung,"  or 
the  analysis  of  Hamlet's  character  in  "Wilhelm 
Meister."  There  was  no  criticism  of  this  kind  in 
England  before  Coleridge;  no  Shakspere  criticism, 
in  particular,  to  compare  with  the  papers  on  that 
subject  by  Lessing,  Herder,  Gerstenberg,  Lenz, 
Goethe,  and  many  other  Germans.  The  only  eight- 
eenth-century Englishman  who  would  have  been 
capable  of  such  was  Gray.  He  had  the  requisite  taste 
and  scholarship,  but  even  he  wanted  the  philosophic 
breadth  and  depth  for  a  fundamental  and  eingehend 
treatment  of  underlying  principles. 

Yet  even  in  this  critical  department,  German  literary 
historians  credit  England  with  the  initiative.  Hett- 
ner  *  mentions  three  English  critics,  in  particular,  as 
predecessors  of  Herder  in  awakening  interest  ia 
popular  poetry.  These  were  Edward  Young,  the 
author  of  '*  Night  Thoughts,"  whose  "Conjectures 
on  Original  Composition"  was  published  in  1759: 
Robert  Wood,  whose  "  Essay  on  the  Original  Genius 
and  Writings  of  Homer"  (1768)  was  translated  into 
German,  French,  Spanish,  and  Italian;  and  Robert 
Lowth,  Bishop  of  Oxford,  who  as  Professor  of  Poetry 
at  Oxford  delivered  there  in  1753  his  "  Praelectiones 
de  Sacra  Poesi  Hebrseorum,"  translated  into  English, 
*  "  Literaturgeschichte,"  3.3.  i.  s.  30-31. 


388  c^  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

and  German  in  1793.  The  significance  of  Young's 
brilliant  little  essay,  which  was  in  form  a  letter  ad- 
dressed to  the  author  of  "  Sir  Charles  Grandison,"  lay 
in  its  assertion  of  the  superiority  of  genius  to  learning 
and  of  the  right  of  genius  to  be  free  from  rules  and 
authorities.  It  was  a  sort  of  literary  declaration  of 
independence;  and  it  asked,  in  substance,  the  ques- 
tion asked  in  Emerson's  "  Nature  " :  "Why  should  not 
we  also  enjoy  an  original  relation  to  the  universe?" 
Pope  had  said,  in  his  "  Essay  on  Criticism,"  *  "  follow 
Nature,"  and  in  order  to  follow  Nature,  learn  the  rules 
and  study  the  ancients,  particularly  Homer.  "  Nature 
and  Homer  were  the  same."  Contrariwise,  Young 
says:  "The  less  we  copy  the  renowned  ancients,  we 
shall  resemble  them  the  more.  .  .  Learning  .  .  . 
is  a  great  lover  of  rules  and  boaster  of  famed  ex- 
amples .  .  .  and  sets  rigid  bounds  to  that  liberty  to 
which  genius  often  owes  its  supreme  glory.  .  .  Born 
originals,  how  comes  it  to  pass  that  we  die  copies!  .  . 
Let  not  great  examples  or  authorities  browbeat  thy 
reason  into  too  great  a  diffidence  of  thyself.  .  , 
While  the  true  genius  is  crossing  all  public  roads  into 
fresh  untrodden  ground;  he  [the  imitative  writer],  up 
to  the  knees  in  antiquity,  is  treading  the  sacred  foot- 
steps of  great  examples  with  the  blind  veneration  of  a 
bigot  saluting  the  sacred  toe."  Young  asserts  that 
Shakspere  is  equal  in  greatness  to  the  ancients: 
regrets  that  Pope  did  not  employ  blank  verse  in  his 
translation  of  Homer,  and  calls  Addison's  "  Cato  "  "  a 
piece  of  statuary." 

Robert  Wood,  who  visited  and  described  the  ruins  of 
Balbec  and  Palmyra,  took  his  Iliad  to  the  Troad  and 

*  See  ante,  p.  48. 


The  German  Tributary.  '        389 

read  it  on  the  spot.  He  sailed  in  the  track  of  Mene- 
laus  and  the  wandering  Ulysses;  and  his  acquaintance 
with  Eastern  scenery  and  life  helped  to  substitute  a 
fresher  apprehension  of  Homer  for  the  somewhat  con- 
ventional conception  that  had  prevailed  through  the 
classical  period.  What  most  forcibly  struck  Herder 
and  Goethe  in  Wood's  essay  was  the  emphasis  laid 
upon  the  simple,  unlettered,  and  even  barbaric  state 
of  society  in  the  heroic  age:  and  upon  the  primitive 
and  popular  character  {Urspriinglichkeif,  Volksthiim- 
lichkeit)  of  the  Homeric  poems.*  This  view  of 
Homer,  as  essentially  a  minstrel  or  ballad-maker,  has 
been  carried  so  far  in  Professor  Newman's  transla- 
tions as  to  provoke  remonstrance  from  Matthew 
Arnold,  who  insists  upon  Homer's  *'  nobility "  and 
"grand  style."  f  But  with  whatever  exaggeration  it 
may  have  latterly  been  held,  it  was  wholesomely 
corrective  and  stimulating  when  propounded  in 
1768. 

Though  the  final  arrival  of  German  romanticism,  in 
its  fullness,  was  postponed  too  late  to  modify  the 
English  movement,  before  the  latter  had  spent  its  first 
strength,  yet  the  prelude  was  heard  in  England  and 
found  an  echo  there.  In  1792  Walter  Scott  was  a 
young  lawyer  at  Edinburgh  and  had  just  attained  his 
majority. 

*  "  Our  polite  neighbors  the  French  seem  to  be  most  ofiFended  at 
certain  pictures  of  primitive  simplicity,  so  unlike  those  refined  modes 
of  modem  life  in  which  they  have  taken  the  lead;  and  to  this  we  may 
partly  impute  the  rough  treatment  which  our  poet  received  from 
them." — Essay  on  //i^w^r  (Dublin  Edition,  1776),  p.  127. 

f  See  Francis  W.  Newman's  "  Iliad  "(1856)  and  Arnold's"  Lectures 
on  Translating  Homer  "  (1861), 


39©  c-^  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

"  Romance  who  loves  to  nod  and  sing 
With  drowsy  head  and  folded  wing, 
To  him  a  painted  paroquet 
Had  been — a  most  familiar  bird — 
Taught  him  his  alphabet  to  say, 
To  lisp  his  very  earliest  word."  * 

He  had  lain  from  infancy  **  in  the  lap  of  legends  old," 
and  was  already  learned  in  the  antiquities  of  the 
Border,  For  years  he  had  been  making  his  collection 
of  memorabilia;  claymores,  suits  of  mail,  Jedburgh 
axes,  border  horns,  etc.  He  had  begun  his  annual 
raids  into  Liddesdale,  in  search  of  ballads  and  folk 
lore,  and  was  filling  notebooks  with  passages  from 
the  Edda,  records  of  old  Scotch  law-cases,  copies 
of  early  English  poems,  notes  on  the  "  Morte  Dar- 
thur,"  on  the  second  sight,  on  fairies  and  witches; 
extracts  from  Scottish  chronicles,  from  the  Books  of 
Adjournal,  from  Aubrey,  and  old  Glanvil  of  supersti- 
tious memory;  tables  of  the  Moeso-Gothic,  Anglo- 
Saxon,  and  Runic  alphabets  and  transcripts  relating 
to  the  history  of  the  Stuarts.  In  the  autumn  or  early 
winter  of  that  year,  a  class  of  six  or  seven  young  men 
was  formed  at  Edinburgh  for  the  study  of  German,  and 
Scott  joined  it.  In  his  own  account  of  the  matter  he 
says  that  interest  in  German  literature  was  first 
aroused  in  Scotland  by  a  paper  read  before  the  Royal 
Society  of  Edinburgh  in  April,  1788,  by  Henry  Mac- 
kenzie, the  "  Addison  of  the  North,"  and  author  of 
that  most  sentimental  of  fictions,  "The  Man  of  Feel- 
ing." "The  literary  persons  of  Edinburgh  were  then 
first  made  aware  of  the  existence  of  works  of  genius 
in  a  language  cognate  with  the  English,  and  possessed 

*  "  Romance,"  Edgar  Poe. 


The  German  Tributary.  391 

of  the  same  manly  force  of  expression;  they  learned 
at  the  same  time  that  the  taste  which  dictated  the 
German  compositions  was  of  a  kind  as  nearly  allied  to 
the  English  as  their  language;  those  who  were  from 
their  youth  accustomed  to  admire  Shakspere  and 
Milton  became  acquainted  for  the  first  time  with  a 
race  of  poets  who  had  the  same  lofty  ambition  to 
spurn  the  flaming  boundaries  of  the  universe  and 
investigate  the  realms  of  Chaos  and  old  Night;  and 
of  dramatists  who,  disclaiming  the  pedantry  of  the 
unities,  sought,  at  the  expense  of  occasional  improba- 
bilities and  extravagance,  to  present  life  on  the  stage 
in  its  scenes  of  wildest  contrast,  and  in  all  its  bound- 
less variety  of  character.  ,  .  Their  fictitious  narra- 
tives, their  ballad  poetry,  and  other  branches  of  their 
literature  which  are  particularly  apt  to  bear  the  stamp 
of  the  extravagant  and  the  supernatural,  began  also  to 
occupy  the  attention  of  the  British  literati."  Scott's 
German  studies  were  much  assisted  by  Alexander 
Frazer  Tytler,  whose  version  of  Schiller's  "  Robbers  " 
was  one  of  the  earliest  English  translations  from  the 
German  theater.* 

In  the  autumn  of  1794  Miss  Aikin,  afterward  Mrs. 
Barbauld,  entertained  a  party  at  Dugald  Stewart's 
by  reading  a  translation  of  Burger's  ghastly  ballad 
"  Lenore."  The  translation  was  by  William  Taylor 
of  Norwich;  it  had  not  yet  been  published,  and  Miss 
Aikin  read  it  from  a  manuscript  copy.  Scott  was  not 
present,  but  his  friend  Mr.  Cranstoun  described  the 
performance  to  him;  and  he  was  so  much  impressed 
by  his  description  that  he  borrowed  a  volume  of  Bur- 
ger's poems  from  his  young  kinswoman  by  marriage, 
*"  Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott,"  Vol.  I.  p.  163. 


392  c/f  History  of  English  'T^omanticisut. 

Mrs.  Scott  of  Harden,  a  daughter  of  Count  Briihl  of 
Martkirchen,  formerly  Saxon  ambassador  at  London, 
who  had  a  Scotchwoman  for  his  second  wife,  the 
dowager  Countess  of  Egremont.  Scott  set  to  work  in 
1795  to  make  a  translation  of  the  ballad  for  himself, 
and  succeeded  so  well  in  pleasing  his  friends  that  he 
had  a  few  copies  struck  off  for  private  circulation  in 
the  spring  of  1796.  In  the  autumn  of  the  same  year 
he  published  his  version  under  the  title  *' William  and 
Helen,"  together  with  "The  Chase,"  a  translation  of 
Burger's  "  Der  Wilde  Jager."  The  two  poems  made 
a  thin  quarto  volume.  It  was  printed  at  Edinburgh, 
was  anonymous,  and  was  Walter  Scott's  first  published 
book.  Meanwhile  Taylor  had  given  his  rendering  to 
the  public  in  the  March  number  of  the  Monthly 
Magazine,  introducing  it  with  a  notice  of  Burger's 
poems;  and  the  very  same  year  witnessed  the  appear- 
ance of  three  other  translations,  one  by  J.  T.  Stanley 
(with  copperplate  engravings),  one  by  Henry  James 
Pye,  the  poet  laureate,  and  one  by  the  Hon.  William 
Robert  Spencer,— author  of  "Beth  Gelert,"  "Too 
Late  I  Stayed,"  etc., — with  designs  by  Lady  Diana 
Beauclerc.  (A  copy  of  this  last,  says  Allibone,  in 
folio,  on  vellum,  sold  at  Christie's  in  1804  for  ^^25  4s.) 
A  sixth  translation,  by  the  Rev.  James  Beresford,  who 
had  lived  some  time  in  Berlin,  came  out  about  1800; 
and  Schlegel  and  Brandl  unite  in  pronouncing  this  the 
most  faithful,  if  not  the  best,  English  version  of  the 
ballad.* 

*  For  full  titles  and  descriptions  of  these  translations,  as  well  as  for 
the  influence  of  Burger's  poems  in  England,  see  Alois  Brandl:  "  Le- 
nore  in  England,"  in  "  Charakteristiken,"  by  Erich  Schmidt  (Berlin, 
1886)  ss.  244-48.     Taylor  said  in  1830  that    no  German  poem  had 


The  German  Tributary.  393 

The  poem  of  which  England  had  taken  such  mani- 
fold possession,  under  the  varied  titles  "Lenore," 
"Leonore,"  "Leonora,"  "Lenora,"  "Ellenore," 
"Helen,"  etc.,  was  indeed  a  notev>rorthy  one.  In 
the  original,  it  remains  Burger's  masterpiece,  and  in 
its  various  English  dresses  it  gained  perhaps  as  many 
graces  as  it  lost.  It  was  first  printed  at  Gottingen 
in  Boie's  "  Musen  Almanach  "  in  1773.  It  was  an 
uncanny  tale  of  a  soldier  of  Frederick  the  Great, 
who  had  perished  in  the  Seven  Years'  War,  and  who 
came  at  midnight  on  a  spectral  steed  to  claim  his  lady- 
love and  carry  her  off  a  thousand  miles  to  the  bridal 
bed.  She  mounts  behind  him  and  they  ride  through 
the  phantasms  of  the  night  till,  at  cock-crow,  they 
come  to  a  churchyard.  The  charger  vanishes  in 
smoke,  the  lover's  armor  drops  from  him,  green 
with  the  damps  of  the  grave,  revealing  a  skeleton 
within,  and  the  maiden  finds  that  her  nuptial  chamber 

been  so  often  translated:  "eight  different  versions  are  lying  on  my 
table  and  I  have  read  others."  He  claimed  his  to  be  the  earliest,  as 
written  in  1790,  though  not  printed  till  1796.  "  Lenore  "  won  at 
once  the  honors  of  parody — surest  proof  of  popularity.  Brandl  men- 
tions two — "  Miss  Kitty,"  Edinburgh,  1797,  and  "The  Hussar  of 
Magdeburg,  or  the  Midnight  Phaeton,"  Edinburgh,  1800,  and  quotes 
Mathias'  satirical  description  of  the  piece  ("  Pursuits  of  Literature," 
1794-97)  as  "  diablerie  tudesque  "  and  a  "  '  Blue  Beard  '  story  for  the 
nursery."  The  bibliographies  mention  a  new  translation  in  1846  by 
Julia  M.  Cameron,  with  illustrations  by  Maclise;  and  I  find  a  notice 
in  Allibone  of  "The  Ballad  of  Lenore:  a  Varioram  Monograph," 
4to,  containing  thirty  metrical  versions  in  English,  announced  as 
about  to  be  published  at  Philadelphia  in  1866  by  Charles  Lukens. 
Qua'fc  whether  this  be  the  same  as  Henry  Clay  Lukens  ("  Erratic 
Enrico"),  who  published  "Lean  'Nora"  (Philadelphia,  1870;  New 
York,  1878),  a  title  suggestive  of  a  humorous  intention,  but  a  book 
which  I  have  not  seen. 


394  '^  History  of  English  'Romanticism. 

is  the  charnel  vault,  and  her  bridegroom  is  Death. 
"This  poem,"  says  Scherer,  "leaves  on  us,  to  some 
degree,  the  impression  of  an  unsolved  mystery;  all  the 
details  are  clear,  but  at  the  end  we  have  to  ask  our- 
selves what  has  really  happened;  was  it  a  dream  of  the 
girl,  a  dream  in  which  she  died,  or  did  the  ghost  really 
appear  and  carry  her  away?"*  The  story  is  man- 
aged, indeed,  with  much  of  that  subtle  art  which  Cole- 
ridge used  in  "The  Ancient  Mariner"  and  "  Christa- 
bel  " ;  so  that  the  boundary  between  the  earthly  and  the 
unearthly  becomes  indefinite,  and  the  doubt  continually 
occurs  whether  we  are  listening  to  a  veritable  ghost- 
story,  or  to  some  finer  form  of  allegory.  "  Lenore  " 
drew  for  its  materials  upon  ballad  motives  common 
to  many  literatures.  It  will  be  sufficient  to  mention 
"Sweet  William's  Ghost, "  as  an  English  example  of 
the  class. 

Scott's  friends  assured  him  that  his  translation  was 
superior  to  Taylor's,  and  Taylor  himself  wrote  to  him: 
"The  ghost  nowhere  makes  his  appearance  so  well 
as  with  you,  or  his  exit  so  well  as  with  Mr.  Spencer." 
But  Lewis  was  right  in  preferring  Taylor's  version, 
which  has  a  wildness  and  quaintness  not  found  in 
Scott's  more  literal  and  more  polished  rendering,  and 
is  wonderfully  successful  in  catching  the  Grobheit,  the 
rude,  rough  manner  of  popular  poetry.  A  few  stanzas 
from  each  will  illustrate  the  difference: 

[From  Scott's  "  William  and  Helen."] 

"  Dost  fear?  dost  fear?     The  moon  shines  clear:  — 

Dost  fear  to  ride  with  me  ? 
Hurrah!  hurrah!  the  dead  can  ride" — 

"O  William,  let  them  be!" 

*  History  of  German  Literature,"  Vol.  II.  p.  123. 


The  German  Tributary.  395 

"See  there!  see  there!     What  yonder  swings 

And  creaks  'mid  whistling  rain  ?  " 
"Gibbet  and  steel,  the  accursed  wheel; 

A  murd'rer  in  his  chain. 

"  Halloa!  Thou  felon,  follow  here: 

To  bridal  bed  we  ride; 
And  thou  shalt  prance  a  fetter  dance 

Before  me  and  my  bride." 

And  hurry!  hurry!  clash,  clash,  clash! 

The  wasted  form  descends,* 
And  fleet  as  wind  through  hazel  bush 

The  wild  career  attends.* 

Tramp,  tramp!  along  the  land  they  rode, 

Splash,  splash!  along  the  sea: 
The  scourge  is  red,  the  spur  drops  blood. 

The  flashing  pebbles  flee. 

[From  Taylor's  "Lenora."] 

Look  up,  look  up,  an  airy  crewe 

In  roundel  dances  reele. 
The  moone  is  bryghte  and  blue  the  night, 

May'st  dimly  see  them  wheel,  f 

"  Come  to,  come  to,  ye  ghostlie  crewe. 

Come  to  and  follow  me. 
And  daunce  for  us  the  wedding  daunce 

When  we  in  bed  shall  be." 

And  brush,  brush,  brush,  the  ghostlie  crew 

Come  wheeling  o'er  their  heads, 
All  rustling  like  the  withered  leaves 

That  wyde  the  whirlwind  spreads. 

*  These  are  book  phrases,  not  true  ballad  diction. 
\Cf.  The  "Ancient  IMariner": 

"  The  feast  is  set,  the  guests  are  met, 
May'st  hear  the  merry  din." 


39<5  c^  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

Halloo!  halloo!  away  they  goe 

Unheeding  wet  or  drye, 
And  horse  and  rider  snort  and  blowe, 

And  sparkling  pebbles  flye. 

And  all  that  in  the  moonshyne  lay 

Behynde  them  fled  afar; 
And  backward  scudded  overhead 

The  skye  and  every  star. 

Tramp,  tramp  across  the  land  they  speede, 

Splash,  splash  across  the  sea: 
"  Hurrah!  the  dead  can  ride  apace, 

Dost  fear  to  ride  with  me  ?  " 

It  was  this  last  stanza  which  fascinated  Scott,  as  re- 
peated from  memory  by  Mr.  Cranstoun;  and  he 
retained  it  without  much  change  in  his  version. 
There  is  no  mention  of  the  sea  in  Burger,  whose 
hero  is  killed  in  the  battle  of  Prague  and  travels 
only  by  land.  But  Taylor  nationalized  and  individual- 
ized the  theme  by  making  his  William  a  knight  of 
Richard  the  Lion  Heart's,  who  had  fallen  in  Holy 
Land.  Scott  followed  him  and  made  his  a  crusader 
in  the  army  of  Frederic  Barbarossa.  Burger's  poem 
was  written  in  an  eight-lined  stanza,  but  Taylor  and 
Scott  both  chose  the  common  English  ballad  verse, 
with  its  folkloreish  associations,  as  the  best  vehicle 
for  reproducing  the  grewsome  substance  of  the  story; 
and  Taylor  gave  an  archaic  cast  to  his  diction,  still 
further  to  heighten  the  effect.  Lewis  considered  his 
version  a  masterpiece  of  translation,  and,  indeed, 
"far  superior,  both  in  spirit  and  in  harmony,  to  the 
German."  Taylor  showed  almost  equal  skill  in  his 
rendering  of  Biirger's  next  most  popular  ballad,  "  Des 
Pfarrer's  Tochter   von  Taubenhain,"  first   printed  in 


\  The  German  Tribtttary.  397 

the  Monthly  Magazine  for  April,  1796,  under  the  some- 
what odd  title  of  "The  Lass  of  Fair  Wone." 

Taylor  of  Norwich  did  more  than  any  man  of  his 
generation,  by  his  translations  and  critical  papers  in 
the  Monthly  Magazine  and  Monthly  Review,  to  spread  a 
knowledge  of  the  new  German  literature  in  England. 
When  a  lad  of  sixteen  he  had  been  sent  to  study  at 
Detmold,  Westphalia,  and  had  spent  more  than  a  year 
(1781-82)  in  Germany,  calling  upon  Goethe  at  Weimar, 
with  a  letter  of  introduction,  on  his  way  home  to 
England.  "  When  his  acquaintance  with  this  literature 
began,"  wrote  Lucy  Aikin,  "there  was  probably  no 
English  translation  of  any  German  author  but  through 
the  medium  of  the  French,  and  he  is  very  likely  to 
have  been  the  first  Englishman  of  letters  to  read 
Goethe,  Wieland,  Lessing,  and  Burger  in  the  origi- 
nals."* Some  years  before  the  publication  of  his 
"Lenora"  he  had  printed  for  private  distribution 
translations  of  Lessing's  "  Nathan  der  Weise  (1791) 
and  Goethe's  "Iphigenie  auf  Tauris "  (1793).  In 
1829-30  he  gathered  up  his  numerous  contributions  to 
periodicals  and  put  them  together  in  a  three-volume 
"  Historic  Survey  of  German  Poetry,"  which  was 
rather  roughly,  though  not  disrespectfully,  handled  by 
Carlyle  in  the  Edinburgh  Revieiv.  Taylor's  tastes  were 
one-sided,  not  to  say  eccentric;  he  had  not  kept  up 
with  the  later  movement  of  German  thought;  his  crit- 
ical opinions  were  out  of  date,  and  his  book  was  sadly 
wanting  in  unity  and  a  proper  perspective.  Carlyle 
was  especially  scandalized  by  the  slight  space  accorded 

*"  Memoir  of  Wm.  Taylor  of  Norwich,"  by  J.  W.  Robberds 
(1843).  Vol.  II.  p.  573- 


398  <v^  History  of  English  l^manticism. 

to  Goethe.*  But  Taylor's  really  brilliant  talent  in 
translation,  and  his  important  service  as  an  introducer 
and  interpreter  of  German  poetry  to  his  own  country- 
men, deserve  always  to  be  gratefully  remembered. 
"  You  have  made  me  hunger  and  thirst  after  German 
poetry,"  wrote  Southey  to  him,  February  24,  1799.! 

The  year  1796,  then,  marks  the  confluence  of  the 
English  and  German  romantic  movements.  It  seems 
a  little  strange  that  so  healthy  a  genius  as  Walter 
Scott  should  have  made  his  deiuf  in  an  exhibition  of 
the  horrible.  Lockhart  reports  him,  on  the  authority 
of  Sir  Alexander  Wood,  as  reading  his  "William  and 
Helen"  over  to  that  gentleman  "in  a  very  slow  and 
solemn  tone,"  and  then  looking  at  the  fire  in  silence 
and  presently  exclaiming,  "  I  wish  to  Heaven  I  could 
get  a  skull  and  two  crossbones."  Whereupon  Sir  Alex- 
ander accompanied  him  to  the  house  of  John  Bell, 
surgeon,  where  the  desired  articles  were  obtained  and 
mounted  upon  the  poet's  bookcase.  During  the  next 
few  years,  Scott  continued  to  make  translations  of 
German  ballads,  romances,  and  chivalry  dramas. 
These  remained  for  the  present  in  manuscript;  and 
some  of  them,  indeed,  such  as  his  versions  of  Babo's 
"  Otto  von  Wittelsbach  "  (1796-97)  and  Meier's  "  Wol- 
fred  von  Dromberg "  (1797)  were  never  permitted 
to  see  the  light.  His  second  publication  (February, 
1799)  was  a  free  translation  of  Goethe's  tragedy,  "  Gotz 
von  Berlichingen  mit  der  Eisernen  Hand."  The  original 
was  a  most  influential  work  in  Germany.  It  had  been 
already  twenty-six  years  before   the  public  and  had 

*  For  Taylor's  opinion  of  Carlyle's  papers  on  Goethe  in  the  Foreign 
Review^  see  "  Historic  Survey,"  Vol.  III.  pp.  378-79. 
f  "  Memoir  of  Taylor,"  Vol.  I.  p.  255. 


7he  German  tributary.  399 

produced  countless  imitations,  with  some  of  which 
Scott  had  been  busy  before  he  encountered  this,  the 
fountain  head  of  the  whole  flood  of  Ritterschau- 
spiele*  Gotz  was  an  historical  character,  a  robber 
knight  of  Franconia  in  the  fifteenth  century,  who  had 
championed  the  rights  of  the  free  knights  to  carry  on 
private  warfare  and  had  been  put  under  the  ban  of 
the  empire  for  engaging  in  feuds.  "  It  would  be  diffi- 
cult," wrote  Carlyle,  "to  name  two  books  which  have 
exercised  a  deeper  influence  on  the  subsequent  litera- 
ture of  Europe" — than  "The  Sorrows  of  Werther  " 
and  "  Gotz."  "  The  fortune  of  'Berlichingen  with  the 
Iron  Hand,' though  less  sudden" — than  Werther's — 
"was  by  no  means  less  exalted.  In  his  own  country 
'  Gotz,' though  he  now  stands  solitary  and  childless, 
became  the  parent  of  an  innumerable  progeny  of  chiv- 
alry plays,  feudal  delineations,  and  poetico-antiquarian 
performances;  which,  though  long  ago  deceased,  made 
noise  enough  in  their  day  and  generation;  and  with 
ourselves  his  influence  has  been  perhaps  still  more 
remarkable.  Sir  Walter  Scott's  first  literary  enter- 
prise was  a  translation  of  'Gotz  von  Berlichingen '; 
and  if  genius  could  be  communicated,  like  instruction, 
we  might  call  this  work  of  Goethe's  the  prime  cause 
of  '  Marmion '  and  'The  Lady  of  the  Lake,'  with 
all  that  has  since  followed  from  the  same  creative 
hand.  .  .  How  far  '  Gotz  von  Berlichingen  '  actually 
affected  Scott'^  literary  destination,  and  whether  with- 

*  Among  the  most  notable  of  these  was  "  Maler  "  (Friedrich) 
Miiller's  "  Golo  und  Genoveva "  (written  1781;  published  1811); 
Count  Torring's  "Agnes  Bernauerin"  (1780);  and  Jacob  Meyer's 
"  Sturm  von  Borberg  "  (1778),  and  "  Fust  von  Stromberg  "  (1782). 
Several  of  these  were  very  successful  on  the  stage. 


400  c^  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

out  it  the  rhymed  romances,  and  then  the  prose 
romances  of  the  author  of  Waverley,  would  not  have 
followed  as  they  did,  must  remain  a  very  obscure 
question;  obscure  and  not  important.  Of  the  fact, 
however,  there  is  no  doubt,  that  these  two  tendencies, 
which  may  be  named  Gotzism  and  Wertherism,  of  the 
former  of  which  Scott  was  representative  with  us, 
have  made  and  are  still  in  some  quarters  making  the 
tour  of  all  Europe.  In  Germany,  too,  there  was  this 
affectionate,  half-regretful  looking-back  into  the  past: 
Germany  had  its  buff-belted,  watch-tower  period  in 
literature,  and  had  even  got  done  with  it  before  Scott 
began."  * 

Elsewhere  Carlyle  protests  against  the  common 
English  notion  that  German  literature  dwells  "with 
peculiar  complacency  among  wizards  and  ruined 
towers,  with  mailed  knights,  secret  tribunals,  monks, 
specters,  and  banditti.  .  .  If  any  man  will  insist  on 
taking  Heinse's  *  Ardinghello '  and  Miller's  *  Sieg- 
wart,'  the  works  of  Veit  Weber  the  Younger,  and  above 
all  the  everlasting  Kotzebue,  f  as  his  specimens  of  Ger- 
man literature,  he  may  establish  many  things.  Black 
Forests  and  the  glories  of  Lubberland,  sensuality  and 
horror,  the  specter  nun  and  the  charmed  moonshine 
shall  not  be  wanting.  Boisterous  outlaws  also,  with 
huge  whiskers  and  the  most  cat-o'-mountain  aspect; 
tear-stained  sentimentalists,  the  grimmest  man-haters, 

*  "  Essay  on  Walter  Scott." 

f  Kotzebue's  "The  Stranger"  ("  Menschenhass  und  Reue")  still 
keeps  the  English  stage.  Sheridan's  "Pizarro" — a  version  of 
Kotzebue's  "  Spaniards  in  Peru  " — was  long  a  favorite;  and  "  Monk  " 
Lewis  made  another  translation  of  the  same  in  1799,  entitled  "  Rolla," 
which,  however,  was  never  acted. 


7he  German  Tributary.  401 

ghosts  and  the  like  suspicious  characters  will  be  found 
in  abundance.  We  are  little  read  in  this  bowl-and- 
dagger  department;  but  we  do  understand  it  to  have 
been  at  onetime  rather  diligently  cultivated;  though 
at  present  it  seems  to  be  mostly  relinquished.  .  . 
What  should  we  think  of  a  German  critic  that  selected 
his  specimens  of  British  literature  from  '  The  Castle 
Specter,'  Mr.  Lewis'  '  Monk,'  or  the  '  Mysteries  of 
Udolpho,'  and  'Frankenstein,  or  the  Modern  Pro- 
metheus'? .  .  .  'Faust,'  for  instance,  passes  with 
many  of  us  for  a  mere  tale  of  sorcery  and  art  magic. 
It  would  scarcely  be  more  unwise  to  consider  '  Ham- 
let '  as  depending  for  its  main  interest  on  the  ghost 
that  walks  in  it."  * 

Now  for  the  works  here  named,  as  for  the  whole 
class  of  melodramas  and  melodramatic  romances  which 
swarmed  in  Germany  during  the  last  quarter  of  the 
century  and  made  their  way  into  English  theaters  and 
circulating  libraries,  in  the  shape  of  translations, 
adaptations,  imitations,  two  plays  were  remotely 
responsible:  Goethe's  "  Gotz  "  (1773),  with  its  robber 
knights,  secret  tribunal,  imperialist  troopers,  gypsies, 
and  insurgent  peasants;  and  Schiller's  "Die  Rauber" 
(1781),  with  its  still  more  violent  situations  and  more 
formidable  dramatis  personam.  True,  this  spawn  of  the 
Sturm-  U7id  Drangzeit,  with  its  dealings  in  banditti, 
monks,  inquisitors,  confessionals,  torture  and  poison, 
dungeon  and  rack,  the  haunted  tower,  the  yelling 
ghost,  and  the  solitary  cell,  had  been  anticipated  in 
England  by  Walpole's  "Castle  of  Otranto "  and 
"  Mysterious  Mother  ";  but  this  slender  native  stream 
was  now  quite  overwhelmed  in  the  turbid  flood  of 
*  "  State  of  Cerman  Literature." 


402  e/^  History  of  English  T^manticism. 

sensational  matter  from  the  Black  Forest  and  the 
Rhine.  Mrs.  Radcliffe  herself  had  drunk  from  foreign 
sources.  In  1794  she  made  the  tour  of  the  Rhine  and 
published  a  narrative  of  her  Journey  in  the  year  follow- 
ing. The  knightly  river  had  not  yet  become  hack- 
neyed; Brentano  had  not  invented  nor  Heine  sung 
the  seductive  charms  of  the  Liirlei;  nor  Byron  mused 
upon  "the  castled  crag  of  Drachenfels."  The 
French  armies  were  not  far  off,  and  there  were 
alarums  and  excursions  all  along  the  border.  But  the 
fair  traveler  paused  upon  many  a  spot  already  sacred 
to  legend  and  song:  the  Mouse  Tower  and  Roland- 
seek  and  the  Seven  Mountains.  She  noted  the  peas- 
ants, in  their  picturesque  costumes,  carrying  baskets 
of  soil  to  the  steep  vineyard  terraces:  the  ruined  keeps 
of  robber  barons  on  the  heights,  and  the  dark  sweep 
of  the  romantic  valleys,  bringing  in  their  tributary 
streams  from  north  and  south. 

Lockhart  says  that  Scott's  translation  of  "  Gotz " 
should  have  been  published  ten  years  sooner  to  have 
had  its  full  effect.  For  the  English  public  had  already 
become  sated  with  the  melodramas  and  romances  of 
Kotzebue  and  the  other  German  Kraftmdnner ;  and 
the  clever  parody  of  "The  Robbers,"  under  the  title 
of  "The  Rovers,"  which  Canning  and  Ellis  had  pub- 
lished in  the  Anti-Jacobin,  had  covered  the  entire 
species  with  ridicule.  The  vogue  of  this  class  of 
fiction,  the  chivalry  romance,  the  feudal  drama,  the 
robber  play  and  robber  novel,  the  monkish  tale  and 
the  ghost  story  [Rittersiiick,  Ritterroman,  Rduber stuck, 
Rduberroman,  Klostergeschichte,  Gespensterlied)  both  in 
Germany  and  England,  satisfied,  however  crudely,  the 
longing  of  the  time   for  freedom,  adventure,  strong 


The  German  Tributary.  403 

action,  and  emotion.  As  Lowell  said  of  the  transcen- 
dental movement  in  New  England,  it  was  a  breaking 
of  windows  to  get  at  the  fresh  air.  Laughable  as 
many  of  them  seem  to-day,  with  their  improbable  plots 
and  exaggerated  characters,  they  met  a  need  which 
had  not  been  met  either  by  the  rationalizing  wits  of 
the  Augustan  age  or  by  the  romanticizing  poets  who 
followed  them  with  their  elegiac  refinement,  and  their 
unimpassioned  strain  of  reflection  and  description. 
They  appeared,  for  the  moment,  to  be  the  new  avatar 
of  the  tragic  muse  whereof  Akenside  and  Collins  and 
Warton  had  prophesied,  the  answer  to  their  demand 
for  something  wild  and  primitive,  for  the  return  into 
poetry  of  the  Naturton,  and  the  long-absent  power 
of  exciting  the  tragic  emotions,  pity  and  terror. 
This  spirit  infected  not  merely  the  department  of  the 
chivalry  play  and  the  Gothic  romance,  but  prose 
fiction  in  general.  It  is  responsible  for  morbid  and 
fantastic  creations  like  Beckford's  "Vathek,"  God- 
win's "St.  Leon"  and  "Caleb  Williams,"  Mrs. 
Shelley's  "Frankenstein,"  Shelley's  "  Zastrozzi "  and 
"St.  Irvine  the  Rosicrucian,"  and  the  American 
Charles  Brockden  Brown's  "Ormond"  and  "  Wie- 
land,"  forerunners  of  Hawthorne  and  Poe;  tales  of 
sleep-walkers  and  ventriloquists,  of  persons  who  are 
in  pursuit  of  the  elixir  vitce,  or  who  have  committed 
the  unpardonable  sin,  or  who  manufacture  monsters  in 
their  laboratories,  or  who  walk  about  in  the  Halls  of 
Eblis,  carrying  their  burning  hearts  in  their  hands. 

Lockhart,  however,  denies  that  "  Gotz  von  Ber- 
lichingen  "  had  anything  in  common  with  the  absurdi- 
ties which  Canning  made  fun  of  in  the  Anti-Jacobin. 
He  says  that  it  was  a  "broad,  bold,   free,  and  most 


(1/. 


404  <iA  History  of  English  '^manticism. 

picturesque  delineation  of  real  characters,  manners, 
and  events."  He  thinks  that  in  the  robber  barons 
of  the  Rhine,  with  "their  forays  upon  each  other's 
domains,  the  besieged  castles,  the  plundered  herds,  the 
captive  knights,  the  brow-beaten  bishop  and  the  baffled 
liege-lord,"  Scott  found  a  likeness  to  the  old  life  of 
the  Scotch  border,  with  its  moss-troopers,  cattle  raids, 
and  private  warfare;  and  that,  as  Percy's  "Reliques" 
prompted  the  ''  Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Border,"  so 
"Gotz"  prompted  the  "Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel" 
and  "  Marmion. "  He  quotes  the  passage  from"  Gotz  " 
where  Selbiss  is  borne  in,  wounded,  by  two  troopers 
Avho  ascend  a  watch-tower  and  describe  to  their  leader 
the  further  progress  of  the  battle;  and  he  asks  "who 
does  not  recognize  in  Goethe's  drama  the  true  original 
of  the  death  scene  in  '  Marmion '  and  the  storm  in 
'Ivanhoe' ?" 

A  singular  figure  now  comes  upon  our  stage, 
Matthew  Gregory  Lewis,  commonly  nicknamed 
"  Monk  "  Lewis,  from  the  title  of  his  famous  romarkce. 
It  is  a  part  of  the  irony  of  things  that  so  robust  a 
muse  as  Walter  Scott's  should  have  been  nursed  in 
infancy  by  a  little  creature  like  Lewis.  His  "  Monk  " 
had  been  published  in  1795,  when  the  author  was  only 
twenty.  In  1798  Scott's  friend  William  Erskine  met 
Lewis  in  London.  The  latter  was  collecting  materials 
for  his  "  Tales  of  Wonder,"  and  when  Erskine  showed 
him  Scott's  "William  and  Helen"  and  "The  Wild 
Huntsman,"  and  told  him  that  he  had  other  things  of 
the  kind  in  manuscript,  Lewis  begged  that  Scott  would 
contribute  to  his  collection.  Erskine  accordingly  put 
him  in  communication  with  Scott,  who  felt  highly 
flattered  by  the  Monk's  request,  and  wrote  to  him  that 


The  German  Tributary.  405 

his  ballads  were  quite  at  his  service.  Lewis  replied, 
thanking  him  for  the  offer.  "A  ghost  or  a  witch,"  he 
wrote,  ^^\ssisi?ie  qua  non  ingredient  in  all  the  dishes 
of  which  I  mean  to  compose  my  hobgoblin  repast." 
Later  in  the  same  year  Lewis  came  to  Edinburgh  and 
was  introduced  to  Scott,  who  found  him  an  odd  con- 
trast to  the  grewsome  horrors  of  his  books,  being  a 
cheerful,  foppish,  round-faced  little  man,  a  follower  of 
fashion  and  an  assiduous  tuft-hunter.  "Mat  had 
queerish  eyes,"  writes  his /r<?/^^/.'  "they  projected 
like  those  of  some  insects,  and  were  flattish  on  the 
orbit.  His  person  was  extremely  small  and  boyish — 
he  was  indeed  the  least  man  I  ever  saw,  to  be  strictly 
well  and  neatly  made.  .  .  This  boyishness  went 
through  life  with  him.  He  was  a  child  and  a  spoiled 
child,  but  a  child  of  high  imagination;  and  so  he  wasted 
himself  on  ghost  stories  and  German  romances.  He 
had  the  finest  ear  for  rhythm  I  ever  met  with — finer 
than  Byron's." 

Byron,  by  the  way,  had  always  a  kindly  feeling  for 
Lewis,  though  he  laughed  at  him  in  "English  Bards 
and  Scotch  Reviewers"  : 

"  O  wonder-working  Lewis,  Monk  or  Bard, 

Who  fain  would'st  make  Parnassus  a  churchyard  ; 
Lo  !  wreaths  of  yew,  not  laurel,  bind  thy  brow  ; 
Thy  muse  a  sprite,  Apollo's  sexton  thou  ; 
Whether  on  ancient  tombs  thou  tak'st  thy  stand, 
By  gibbering  spectres  hailed,  thy  kindred  band. 
Or  tracest  chaste  descriptions  on  thy  page, 
To  please  the  females  of  our  modest  age — 
All  hail,  M.  P.,*  from  whose  infernal  brain 
Thin-sheeted  phantoms  glide,  a  grisly  train  ; 

*  Lewis  sat  in  Parliament  for  Hindon,  Wilts,  succeeding  Beckford 
of  "  Vathek  "  and  Fonthill  Abbey  fame. 


4o6  n/J  History  of  English  T^omanticism. 

At  whose  command  grim  women  throng  in  crowds, 
And  kings  of  fire,  of  water  and  of  clouds, 
With  '  small  gray  men,'  wild  yagers  and  what  not, 
To  crown  with  honor  thee  and  Walter  Scott  !  " 

In  1816,  while  on  his  way  to  Italy,  Lewis  sojourned 
for  a  space  with  Byron  and  Shelley  in  their  Swiss 
retreat  and  set  the  whole  company  composing  goblin 
stories.  The  most  remarkable  outcome  of  this  queer 
symposium  was  Mrs.  Shelley's  abnormal  romance, 
"Frankenstein."  The  signatures  of  Byron  and 
Shelley  are  affixed,  as  witnesses,  to  a  codicil  to  Lewis' 
will,  which  he  drew  at  this  time  and  dated  at  Maison 
Diodati,  Geneva;  a  somewhat  rhetorical  document  in 
which  he  provided  for  the  protection  of  the  slaves  on 
his  Jamaica  plantations.  It  was  two  years  after  this, 
and  on  his  return  voyage  from  a  visit  to  these  West 
Indian  estates,  that  Lewis  died  of  yellow  fever  and 
was  buried  at  sea.  Byron  made  this  note  of  it  in  his 
diary : 


that  is. 


"  '  I'd  give  the  lands  of  Deloraine 
Dark  Musgrave  were  alive  again,' 


"  I  would  give  many  a  sugar  cane 
Monk  Lewis  were  alive  again." 


Scott's  modesty  led  him  to  depreciate  his  own  verses 
as  compared  with  Lewis',  some  of  which  he  recited  to 
/  Ballantyne,  in  1799,  speaking  of  their  author,  says 
Lockhart,  "with  rapture."  But  however  fine  an  ear 
for  rhythm  Lewis  may  have  had,  his  verse  is  for  the 
most  part  execrable;  and  his  jaunty,  jigging  anapaests 
and  pragmatic  manner  are  ludicrously  out  of  keeping 


The  German  Tributary.  407 

with   the    horrors   of   his   tale,    increasing  the  air  of 
bathos  which  distinguishes  his  poetry: 

"  A  toad  still  alive  in  the  liquor  she  threw, 
And  loud  shrieked  the  toad  as  in  pieces  it  flew: 
And  ever,  the  cauldron  as  over  she  bent, 
She  muttered  strange  words  of  mysterious  intent :  " 

or  this  from  the  same  ballad :  * 

"  Wild  laughing,  the  Fiend  caught  the  hand  from  the  floor. 
Releasing  the  babe,  kissed  the  wound,  drank  the  gore  ; 
A  little  jet  ring  from  her  finger  then  drew, 
Thrice  shrieked  a  loud  shriek  and  was  borne  from  their  view." 

Lewis  would  appear  to  have  inherited  his  romantic 
turn  from  his  mother,  a  sentimental  little  dame  whose 
youthful  looks  caused  her  often  to  be  taken  for  Mat's 
sister,  and  whose  reading  was  chiefly  confined  to 
novels.  The  poor  lady  was  something  of  a  blue- 
stocking and  aspired,  herself,  to  literary  honors, 
Lewis'  devotion  to  her  is  very  charming,  and  the  elder- 
brotherly  tone  of  his  letters  to  her  highly  amusing. 
But  he  had  a  dislike  of  "female  authorship";  and 
the  rumor  having  reached  his  ear  that  his  mother  had 
written  a  novel  and  a  tragedy  and  was  preparing  to 
print  them,  he  wrote  to  her  in  alarm,  begging  her  to 
stay  her  hand.  "I  hold  that  a  woman  has  no  busi- 
ness to  be  a  public  character,  and  that,  in  proportion 
as  she  acquires  notoriety,  she  loses  delicacy.  I  always 
consider  a  female  author  as  a  sort  of  half-man."  He 
was  also,  quite  properly,  shocked  at  some  gossip 
which  attributed  "The  Monk,"  to  his  mother  instead 
of  to  his  mother's  son. 

We    read    in    the     "Life    and    Correspondence    of 

*  "  The  Grim  "White  Woman,"  in  "  Tales  of  Wonder." 


4o8  c/^  History  of  English  l^pmanticism. 

Matthew  Gregory  Lewis"  (2  vols.,  London,  1839), 
that  one  of  Mrs.  Lewis'  favorite  books  was  "  Glanvil 
on  Witches."  Glanvil  was  the  seventeenth-century 
writer  whose  "Vanity  of  Dogmatizing,"*  and  "Sad- 
duceismus  Triumphatus "  rebuked  the  doubter  and 
furnished  arguments  for  Cotton  Mather's  "  Wonders 
of  the  Invisible  World  "  (1693),  an  apology  for 
his  share  in  the  Salem  witchcraft  trials;  and  whose 
description  of  a  ghostly  drum,  that  was  heard  to 
beat  every  night  in  a  Wiltshire  country  house,  gave 
Addison  the  hint  for  his  comedy  of  "  The  Drummer." 
(  Young  Lewis  gloated  with  ar  pleasing  horror  over 
Glanvil's  pages  and  the  wonderful  copperplates  which 
embellished  them;  particularly  the  one  which  repre- 
sents the  devil  beating  his  airy  tympanum  over  Mr. 
Mompesson's  house.  In  the  ancient  mansion  of  Stan- 
stead  Hall,  belonging  to  a  kinsman  of  his  father, 
where  the  boy  spent  a  part  of  his  childhood,  there  was 
a  haunted  chamber  known  as  the  cedar  room.  "In 
maturer  years,"  says  his  biographer,  "Lewis  has  fre- 
quently been  heard  to  declare  that  at  night,  when  he 
was  conducted  past  that  gloomy  chamber,  on  the  way 
to  his  dormitory,  he  would  cast  a  glance  of  terror  over 
his  shoulder,  expecting  to  see  the  huge  and  strangely 
carved  folding  doors  fly  open  and  disclose  some  of 
those  fearful  shapes  that  afterward  resolved  themselves 
into  the  ghastly  machinery  of  his  works." 

Lewis'  first    and  most  celebrated    publication    was 
^    "  Ambrosio,   or   the   Monk"    (1795),  a   three-volume 
j   romance  of  the  Gothic  type,  and  a  lineal  descendant 
'    of  Walpole  and  Mrs.  Radcliffe.      He  began  it  at  Oxford 


( 


V 


*  Matthew  Arnold's  lovely   "Scholar   Gypsy"   was  suggested  by 
a  passage  in  this. 


The  German  Tributary.  4^9 

in  1792,  describing  it  in  a  letter  to  his  mother  as  "a 
romance  in  the  style  of  'The  Castle  of  Otranto.' " 
But  in  the  summer  of  the  same  year  he  went  to  Ger- 
many and  took  up  his  residence  at  Weimar,  where  he 
was  introduced  to  Goethe  and  made  eager  acquaintance 
with  the  bizarre  productions  of  the  Sturtn-  und  Drang- 
periode.  For  years  Lewis  was  one  of  the  most  active 
intermediaries  between  the  German  purveyors  of  the  / 
terrible  and  the  English  literary  market.  He  fed  \ 
the  stage  with  melodramas  and  operas,  and  stuffed 
the  closet  reader  with  ballads  and  prose  romances.* 
Meanwhile,  being  at  The  Hague  in  the  summer  of  1794, 
he  resumed  and  finished  his  "Monk,"  in  ten  weeks. 
"I  was  induced  to  go  on  with  it,"  he  wrote  to  his 
mother,  "by  reading  the  'Mysteries  of  Udolpho,' 
which  is,  in  my  opinion,  one  of  the  most  interesting 
books  that  has  ever  been  published.  ,  .  When  you 
read  it,  tell  me  whether  you  think  there  is  any  resem- 
blance between  the  character  given  of  Montoni  .  .  . 
and  my  own.  I  confess  that  it  struck  me."  This 
innocent  vanity  of  fancying  a  likeness  between  Anne 
Radcliffe's  dark-browed  villain  and  his  own  cherubic 

*  The  following  is  a  list  of  his  principal  translations:  "The 
Minister"  (1797),  from  Schiller's  "  Kabale  und  Liebe  "  ;  played  at 
Covent  Garden  in  1803,  as  "The  Harper's  Daughter."  "  RoUa  " 
(1799),  from  Kotzebue's  "  Spaniards  in  Peru."  "  Adelmorn,  or  the 
Outlaw"  (1800),  played  at  Drury  Lane,  1801.  "  Tales  of  Terror" 
(1801)  and  "Tales  of  Wonder  "  (1801).  (There  seems  to  be  some 
doubt  as  to  the  existence  of  the  alleged  Kelso  editions  of  these  in 
1799  and  1800,  respectively.  See  article  on  Lewis  in  the  "Diet. 
Nat.  Biog.")  "The  Bravo  of  Venice"  (1804),  a  prose  romance, 
dramatized  and  played  at  Covent  Garden,  as  "  Rugantino,"  in  1805. 
"Feudal  Tyrants"  (1807),  a  four-volume  romance.  "Romantic 
Tales"  (1808),  4  vols,  from  German  and  French. 


4IO  <^  History  of  English  '^manticism. 

personality  recalls  Scott's  story  about  the  picture  of 
Lewis,  by  Saunders,  which  was  handed  round  at 
Dalkeith  House.  "The  artist  had  ingeniously  flung  a 
dark  folding-mantle  around  the  form,  under  which  was 
half-hid  a  dagger,  a  dark  lantern,  or  some  cut-throat 
appurtenance;  with  all  this,  the  features  were  pre- 
served'and  ennobled.  It  passed  from  hand  to  hand 
into  that  of  Henry,  Duke  of  Buccleuch,  who,  hearing 
the  general  voice  affirm  that  it  was  very  like,  said 
aloud,  '  Like  Mat  Lewis!  Why,  that  picture's  like  a 
man.'"  "The  Monk"  used,  and  abused,  the  now 
familiar  apparafus  of  Gothic  romance.  It  had  Span- 
\  ish  grandees,  heroines  of  dazzling  beauty,  bravoes 
and  forest  banditti,  foolish  duennas  and  gabbling 
domestics,  monks,  nuns,  inquisitors,  magic  mirrors, 
enchanted  wands,  midnight  incantations,  sorcerers, 
ghosts,  demons;  haunted  chambers,  wainscoated  in 
dark  oak;  moonlit  castles  with  ruined  towers  and 
ivied  battlements,  whose  galleries  rang  with  the 
shrieks  and  blasphemies  of  guilty  spirits,  and  from 
whose  portals  issued,  when  the  castle  clock  tolled 
one,  the  specter  of  a  bleeding  nun,  with  dagger  and 
lamp  in  hand.  There  were  poisonings,  stabbings,  and 
ministrations  of  sleeping  potions;  beauties  who 
masqueraded  as  pages,  and  pages  who  masqueraded 
as  wandering  harpers;  secret  springs  that  gave 
admittance  to  winding  stairs  leading  down  into  the 
charnel  vaults  of  convents,  where  erring  sisters  were 
immured  by  cruel  prioresses  and  fed  on  bread  and 
water  among  the  loathsome  relics  of  the  dead. 

With  all  this,  "The  Monk"  is  a  not  wholly  con- 
temptible work.  There  is  a  certain  narrative  power 
about  it  which  puts  it  much  above  the  level  of  "The 


The  German  Tributary.  411 

Castle  of  Otranto."  And  though  it  partakes  of  the 
stilted  dialogue  and  false  conception  of  character 
that  abound  in  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  romances,  it  has 
neither  the  excess  of  scenery  nor  of  sentiment  which 
distinguishes  that  very  prolix  narrator.  There  is 
nothing  strictly  mediaeval  about  it.  The  knight  in 
armor  cuts  no  figure  and  the  historical  period  is  not 
precisely  indicated.  But  the  ecclesiastical  features 
lend  it  a  semblance  of  medicevalism;  and  one  is 
reminded,  though  but  faintly,  by  the  imprisonment 
of  the  offending  sister  in  the  sepulcher  of  the  con- 
vent, of  the  scene  in  "  Marmion "  where  Constance 
is  immured  in  the  vaults  of  Lindisfarne — a  frank 
anachronism,  of  course,  on  Scott's  part,  since  Lindis- 
farne had  been  in  ruins  centuries  before  the  battle 
of  Flodden.  The  motto  from  Horace  on  the  title 
page  of  "The  Monk"  sums  up  its  contents,  and 
indeed  the  contents  of  most  of  its  author's  writings, 
prose  and  verse — 

"  Somnia,  terrores  magicos,  miracula,  sagas, 
Nocturnos  lemures  portentaque. 

The  hero  Ambrosio  is  the  abbot  of  St.  Francis' 
Capuchin  monastery  in  Madrid;  a  man  of  rigid 
austerity,  whose  spiritual  pride  makes  him  an  easy 
prey  to  the  temptations  of  a  female  demon,  who  leads 
him  by  degrees  through  a  series  of  crimes,  including 
incest  and  parricide,  until  he  finally  sells  his  soul  to  the 
devil  to  escape  from  the  dungeons  of  the  Inquisition 
and  the  auto  da  fe,  subscribing  the  agreement,  in 
approved  fashion,  upon  a  parchment  scroll  with  an  iron 
pen  dipped  in  blood  from  his  own  veins.  The  fiend, 
who  enters  with  thunder  and  lightning,   over  whose 


412  c/f  History  of  English  l^pmanticism. 

shoulders  "waved  two  enormous  sable  wings,"  and 
whose  hair  "was  supplied  by  living  snakes,"  then 
snatches  up  his  victim  and  soars  with  him  to  a  peak 
of  the  Sierra  Morena,  where  in  a  Salvator  Rosa  land- 
scape of  torrents,  cliffs,  caverns,  and  pine  forests,  by 
the  light  of  an  opera  moon,  and  to  the  sound  of  the 
night  wind  sighing  hoarsely  and  "the  shrill  cry  of 
mountain  eagles,"  he  drops  him  over  a  precipice  and 
makes  an  end  of  him. 

_  A  passage  from  the  episode  of  Agnes  de  Medina,  the 
incarcerated  nun,  will  illustrate  Lewis'  wonder-work- 
ing arts :  "A  faint  glimmering  of  light  which  strained 
through  the  bars  permitted  me  to  distinguish  the  sur- 
rounding horrors.  I  was  oppressed  by  a  noisome, 
suffocating  smell;  and  perceiving  that  the  grated  door 
was  unfastened,  I  thought  that  I  might  possibly  effect 
my  escape.  As  I  raised  myself  with  this  design,  my 
hand  rested  upon  something  soft.  I  grasped  it  and 
advanced  it  toward  the  light.  Almighty  God!  what 
was  my  disgust!  my  consternation!  In  spite  of  its 
putridity  and  the  worms  which  preyed  upon  it,  I  per- 
ceived a  corrupted  human  head,  and  recognized  the 
features  of  a  nun  who  had  died  some  months  before. 
,  .  A  sepulchral  lamp  was  suspended  from  the  roof 
by  an  iron  chain  and  shed  a  gloomy  light  through  the 
dungeon.  Emblems  of  death  were  seen  on  every  side; 
skulls,  shoulder-blades,  thigh-bones  and  other  relics 
of  mortality  were  scattered  upon  the  dewy  ground. 
.  .  As  I  shrunk  from  the  cutting  wind  which  howled 
through  my  subterraneous  dwelling,  the  change  seemed 
so  striking,  so  abrupt,  that  I  doubted  its  reality.  .  . 
Sometimes  I  felt  the  bloated  toad,  hideous  and  pam- 
pered   with    the    poisonous    vapors    of   the    dungeon, 


The  German  Tributary.  413 

dragging  his  loathsome  length  along  my  bosom;  some- 
times the  quick,  cold  lizard  roused  me,  leaving  his 
slimy  track  upon  my  face,  and  entangling  itself  in  the 
tresses  of  my  wild  and  matted  hair.  Often  have  I,  at 
waking,  found  my  fingers  ringed  v^rith  the  long  worms 
which  bred  in  the  corrupted  flesh  of  my  infant." 

**  The  Monk  "  won  for  its  author  an  immediate  and 
wide  celebrity,  assisted  no  doubt  by  the  outcry  against 
its  immorality.  Lewis  tried  to  defend  himself  by 
pleading  that  the  outline  and  moral  of  his  story  were 
borrowed  from  "The  History  of  Santon  Barsisa  "  in 
the  Guardian  (No.  148).  But  the  voluptuous  nature 
of  some  of  the  descriptions  induced  the  Attorney 
General  to  enjoin  the  sale  of  the  book,  and  Lewis 
bowed  to  public  opinion  so  far  as  to  suppress  the  ob- 
jectionable passages  in  later  editions.  Lewis'  melo- 
drama "The  Castle  Specter "  was  first  performed 
December  14,  1797,  at  Drury  Lane,  ran  sixty  nights 
and  "continued  popular  as  an  acting  play,"  says  the 
biographer,  "  up  to  a  very  recent  period."*  This  is 
strong  testimony  to  the  contemporary  appetite  for 
nightmare,  for  the  play  is  a  trumpery  affair.  Sheridan, 
who  had  a  poor  opinion  of  it,  advised  the  dramatist  to 
keep  the  specter  out  of  the  last  scene.  "  It  had  been 
said,"  explains  Lewis  in  his  preface,  "that  if  Mr. 
Sheridan  had  not  advised  me  to  content  myself  with  a 
single  specter,  I  meant  to  have  exhibited  a  whole 
regiment  of  ghosts."  The  prologue,  spoken  by 
Mr.  Wroughton,  invokes  "  the  fair  enchantress,  Ro- 
mance ": 

"  The  moonstruck  child  of  genius  and  of  woe," 
*  The  printed  play  had  reached  its  eleventh  edition  in  1803. 


414  "vf  History  of  English  Romanticism. 

who 

" — I-oathes  the  sun  or  blazing  taper's  light  ; 
The  moonbeamed  landscape  and  tempestuous  night 
Alone  she  loves  ;  and  oft  with  glimmering  lamp 
Near  graves  new  opened,  or  midst  dungeons  damp, 
Drear  forests,  ruined  aisles  and  haunted  towers, 
Forlorn  she  roves  and  raves  away  the  hours." 

The  scene  of  the  drama  is  Conway  Castle  in  Wales, 
where  abides   Earl  Osmond,    a    feudal  tyrant  of  the 
"  Otranto  "  type,  who  is  planning  an  incestuous  mar- 
riage with  his  own   niece,  concerning  which  he  thus 
soliloquizes:     "What   though    she    prefer  a  basilisk's 
,     kiss  to  mine?     Because  my  short-lived  joy  may  cause 
•     her  eternal  sorrow,  shall  I  reject  those  pleasures  sought 
so  long,  desired  so  earnestly?     That  will   I   not,  by 
Heaven!     Mine  she  is,  and  mine  she  shall  be,  though 
Reginald's  bleeding  ghost  flit  before  me  and  thunder 
in  my   ear  'Hold!  Hold!' — Peace,   stormy  heart,  she 
comes."     Reginald's  ghost  does  not  flit,  because  Regi- 
nald   is  still    in  the    flesh,  though    not    in  very    much 
j      flesh.     He   is  Osmond's  brother  and  Angela's   father, 
I      and  the   wicked  Earl  thought   that  he  had   murdered 
him.     It  turns  out,  however,  that,  though  left  for  dead, 
I       he  has  recovered  of  his  hurts  and  has  been  kept  unbe- 
1       known    in    solitary    confinement,   in  a  dungeon    vault 
/        under  tlie  castle,  for  the  somewhat  long  period  of  six- 
;         teen  years.     He  is  discovered  in  Act  V.,  "emaciated, 
in  coarse  garments,  his  hair  hanging  wildly  about  his 
face,  and  a  chain  bound  round  his  body." 

Reginald's  ghost  does  not  flit,  but  Evelina's  does. 
Evelina  is  Reginald's  murdered  wife,  and  her  specter 
in  "  white  and  flowing  garments,  spotted  with  blood," 
appears  to  Angela  in  the  oratory  communicating  with 


The  German  Tributary.  415 

the  cedar  room,  which  is  furnished  with  an  antique 
bedstead  and  the  portrait  of  a  lady  on  a  sliding 
panel.  In  truth,  the  castle  is  uncommonly  well  sup- 
plied with  apparitions.  Earl  Herbert  rides  around  it 
every  night  on  a  white  horse;  Lady  Bertha  haunts  the 
west  pinnacle  of  the  chapel  tower;  and  Lord  Hilde- 
brand  may  be  seen  any  midnight  in  the  great  hall, 
playing  football  with  his  own  head.  So  says  Motley 
the  jester,  who  affords  the  comedy  element  of  the 
play,  with  the  help  of  a  fat  friar  who  guzzles  sack  and 
stuffs  venison  pasties,  and  a  soubrette  after  the 
"  Otranto  "  pattern. 

A  few  poems  were  scattered  through  the  pages  of 
"The  Monk,"  including  a  ballad  from  the  Danish,  and 
another  from  the  Spanish.  But  the  most  famous  of 
these  was  "Alonzo  the  Brave  and  the  Fair  Imo- 
gene,"  original  with  Lewis,  though  evidently  suggested 
by  **Lenore."  It  tells  how  a  lover  who  had  gone  to 
Palestine  presented  himself  at  the  bridal  feast  of  his 
faithless  fair  one,  just  as  the  clock  struck  one  and  the 
lights  burned  blue.  At  the  request  of  the  company, 
the  strange  knight  raises  his  visor  and  discloses  a 
skeleton  head: 

"  All  present  then  uttered  a  terrified  shout ; 
All  turned  with  disgust  from  the  scene  ; 
The  worms  they  crept  in  and  the  worms  they  crept  out, 
And  sported  his  eyes  and  his  temples  about 
While  the  spectre  addressed  Imogene." 

He  winds  his  arms  about  her  and  sinks  with  his  prey 
through  the  yawning  ground;  and 

"  At  midnight  four  times  in  each  year  does  her  sprite, 
When  mortals  in  slumber  are  bound, 


4i6  iA  History  of  English  l^omanticisni. 

Arrayed  in  her  bridal  apparel  of  white, 
Appear  in  the  hall  with  a  skeleton  knight 
And  shriek  as  he  whirls  her  around. 

"  While  they  drink  out  of  skulls  newly  torn  from  the  grave, 
Dancing  round  them  pale  spectres  are  seen. 
Their  liquor  is  blood,  and  this  horrible  stave 
They  howl  :  '  To  the  health  of  Alonzo  the  Brave 
And  his  consort,  the  Fair  Imogene  ! '  " 

Lewis'  own  contributions  to  his  "  Tales  of  Terror  "  and 
"Tales  of  Wonder,"  were  of  this  same  raw-head  and 
bloody-bones  variety.  His  imagination  rioted  in 
physical  horrors.  There  are  demons  who  gnash  with 
iron  fangs  and  brandish  gore-fed  scorpions;  maidens 
are  carried  off  by  the  Winter  King,  the  Water  King, 
the  Cloud  King,  and  the  Sprite  of  the  Glen;  they  are 
poisoned  or  otherwise  done  to  death,  and  their  wraiths 
revisit  their  guilty  lovers  in  their  shrouds  at  midnight's 
dark  hour  and  imprint  clammy  kisses  upon  them  with 
livid  lips;  gray  friars  and  black  canons  abound;  requiem 
and  death  knell  sound  through  the  gloom  of  the 
cloisters;  echo  roars  through  high  Gothic  arches; 
the  anchorite  mutters  in  his  mossy  cell;  tapers  burn 
dim,  torches  cast  a  red  glare  on  vaulted  roofs;  the 
night  wind  blows  through  dark  aisles;  the  owl  hoots 
in  the  turret,  and  dying  groans  are  heard  in  the  lonely 
house  upon  the  heath,  where  the  black  and  tattered 
arras  molders  on  the  wall. 

The  "Tales  of  Wonder  "  included  translations  by 
Lewis  from  Goethe's  "  Fisher  "  and  "  Erl-King,"  and 
from  German  versions  of  Runic  ballads  in  Herder's 
"Stimmen  der  Volker."  Scott's  "Wild  Huntsman," 
from  Burger,  was  here  reprinted,  and  he  contributed, 
in  addition,  "  Frederick  and  Alice,"  paraphrased  from 


The  German  Tributary.  417 

a  romance-fragment  in  Goethe's  opera  "  Claudina  von 
Villa  Bella";  and  three  striking  ballads  of  his  own, 
**  The  Fire  King,"  a  story  of  the  Crusades,  and  "  Glen- 
finlas"  and  "The  Eve  of  St.  John,"  Scottish  tales  of 
"gramarye."  There  were  two  or  three  old  English 
ballads  in  the  collection,  such  as  "Clerk  Colvin"  and 
"Tam  Lin";  a  contribution  from  George  Colman, 
Jr.,  the  dramatist,  and  one  from  Scott's  eccentric 
friend  Leyden;  and  the  volume  concluded  with  Tay- 
lor's "Lenora."  * 

It  is  comical  to  read  that  the  Monk  gave  Scott  lec- 
tures in  the  art  of  versification  and  corrected  the 
Scotticisms  and  false  rhymes  in  his  translations  from 
Burger;  and  that  Scott  respectfully  deferred  to  his 
advice.  For  nothing  can  be  in  finer  contrast  with 
Lewis'  penny  dreadful,  than  the  martial  ring  of  the 
verse  and  the  manly  vigor  of  the  style  in  Scott's  part 
of  the  book.      This   is   how  Lewis   writes   anapaests, 

e.g.: 

"  All  shrouded  she  was  in  the  garb  of  the  tomb, 
Her  lips  they  were  livid,  her  face  it  was  wan  ; 
A  death  the  most  horrid  had  rifled  her  bloom 

And  each  charm  of  beauty  was  faded  and  gone." 

And  this  is  how  Scott  writes  them: 

"  He  clenched  his  set  teeth  and  his  gauntleted  hand, 
He  stretched  with  one  buffet  that  page  on  the  sand.    .    . 
For  down  came  the  Templars  like  Cedron  in  flood, 
And  dyed  their  long  lances  in  Saracen  blood."  '\ 

It  is  no  more  possible  to  take  Monk  Lewis  seriously 
than  to   take    Horace  Walpole   seriously.     They   are 

*The  "Tales  of  Terror,"  and  "  Tales  of  Wonder  "are  reprinted  in 
a  single  volume  of  "  Morley's  Universal  Library,"  1887. 


4 1 8  c//  History  of  English  Romanticism. 


both  like  children  telling  ghost-stories  in  the  dark  and 
trying  to  make  themselves  shudder.  Lewis  was  even 
frivolous  enough  to  compose  parodies  on  his  own 
ballads.  A  number  of  these  facetice — "  The  Mud 
King,"  "  Giles  JoUup  the  Grave  and  Brown  Sally- 
Green,"  etc. — diversify  his  "  Tales  of  Wonder." 

Scott  soon  found  better  work  for  his  hands  to  do 
than  translating  German  ballads  and  melodramas;  but 
in  later  years  he  occasionally  went  back  to  these  early 
sources  of  romantic  inspiration.  Thus  his  poem 
**  The  Noble  Moringer"  was  taken  from  a  "  Sammlung 
Deutscher  Volkslieder  "  published  at  Berlin  in  1807  by 
Busching  and  Von  der  Hagen.  In  1799  he  had  made 
a  rifacimento  of  a  melodrama  entitled  "  Der  Heilige 
Vehme"  in  Veit  Weber's  "  Sagen  der  Vorzeit. "  This 
he  found  among  his  papers  thirty  years  after  (1829) 
and  printed  in  "The  Keepsake,"  under  the  title  of 
"The  House  of  Aspen. "  Its  most  telling  feature  is 
the  description  of  the  Vehm-Gericht  or  Secret 
Tribunal,  but  it  has  little  importance.  In  his 
"  Historic  Survey,"  Taylor  said  that  "  Gotz  von  Ber- 
lichingen"  was  "translated  into  English  in  1799  at 
Edinburgh,  by  Wm.  Scott,  Advocate;  no  doubt  the 
same  person  who,  under  the  poetical  but  assumed 
name  of  Walter,  has  since  become  the  most  extensively 
popular  of  the  British  writers  "!  This  amazing  state- 
ment is  explained  by  a  blunder  on  the  title-page  of 
Scott's  "  Gotz,"  where  the  translator's  name  is  given 
as  William  Scott.  But  it  led  to  a  slightly  acrimonious 
correspondence  between  Sir  Walter  and  the  Norwich 
reviewer.* 

,  The    tide   of   German   romance    had   begun  to  ebb 
*  See  "  Memoir  of  Wm.  Taylor,"  Vol.  II.  pp.  533-38. 


The  German  Tributary.  419 

before  the  close  of  the  century.  It  rose  again  a 
few  years  later,  and  left  perhaps  more  lasting  tokens 
this  second  time;  but  the  ripple-marks  of  its  first 
invasion  are  still  discernible  in  English  poetry  and 
prose.  Southey  was  clearly  in  error  when  he  wrote 
to  Taylor,  September  5,  1798:  "Coleridge's  ballad, 
'The  Ancient  Mariner'  is,  I  think,  the  clumsiest 
attempt  at  German  sublimity  I  ever  saw.*"  The 
**  Mariner"  is  not  in  the  least  German,  and  when  he 
wrote  it,  Coleridge  had  not  been  in  Germany  and  did 
not  know  the  language.  He  had  read  "Die  Rauber," 
to  be  sure,  some  years  before  in  Tytler's  translation. 
He  was  at  Cambridge  at  the  time,  and  one  night  in 
winter,  on  leaving  the  room  of  a  college  friend,  care- 
lessly picked  up  and  took  away  with  him  a  copy  of  the 
tragedy,  the  very  name  of  which  he  had  never  heard 
before.  "A  winter  midnight,  the  wind  high  and  'The 
Robbers '  for  the  first  time.  The  readers  of  Schiller 
will  conceive  what  I  felt."  He  recorded,  in  the 
sonnet  "To  Schiller"  (written  December,  1794,  or 
January,  1795),  ^^^  terrific  impression  left  upon  his 
imagination  by 

— "  The  famished  father's  cry 
From  the  dark  dungeon  of  the  tower  time-rent," 

and  wished  that  he  might  behold  the  bard  himself, 
wandering  at  eve — 

"  Beneath  some  vast  old  tempest-swinging  wood." 

Coleridge  was  destined  to  make  the  standard  transla- 
tion of  "  Wallenstein";  and  there  are  motives  bor- 
rowed from  "  The   Robbers"  and   "  The  Ghost-Seer  " 

*  "  Memoir  of  Taylor,"  Vol.  I.  p.  223. 


42 o  ^  History  of  English  '^manticism. 

in  his  own  very  rubbishy  dramas,  "  Zapolya  " — of 
which  Scott  made  some  use  in  "  Peveril  of  the  Peak  " — 
and  **  Osorio "  (1797).  The  latter  was  rewritten  as 
''Remorse,"  put  on  at  Drury  Lane  January  23,  1813, 
and  ran  twenty  nights.  It  had  been  rejected  by 
Sheridan,  who  expressed  a  very  proper  contempt  for 
it  as  an  acting  play.  The  Rev.  W.  L.  Bowles  and 
Byron,  who  had  read  it  in  manuscript  and  strangely 
overvalued  it,  both  made  interest  with  the  manager 
to  have  it  tried  on  the  stage.  "  Remorse"  also  took 
some  hints  from  Lewis'  "Monk." 

But  Coleridge  came  in  time  to  hold  in  low  esteem,  if 
not  precisely  "The  Robbers"  itself,  yet  that  school 
of  German  melodrama  of  which  it  was  the  grand 
exemplar.  In  the  twenty-third  chapter  of  the  "  Bio- 
graphia  Literaria"  (18 17)  he  reviewed  with  severity  the 
Rev.  Charles  Robert  Maturin's  tragedy  "Bertram,  or 
the  Castle  of  St.  Aldobrand,"  *  and  incidentally  gave 
the  genesis  of  that  whole  theatric  species  "which  it 
has  been  the  fashion,  of  late  years,  at  once  to  abuse 
and  to  enjoy  under  the  name  of  the  German  Drama. 
Of  this  latter  Schiller's  'Robbers'  was  the  earliest 
specimen,  the  first-fruits  of  his  youth.  .  .  Only  as 
such  did  the  maturer  judgment  of  the  author  tolerate 
the  play."  Coleridge  avows  that  "  The  Robbers  "  and 
its   countless  imitations  were    due   to  the   popularity 

*  This  was  one  of  the  latest  successes  of  the  kind.  It  was  played 
at  Drury  Lane  in  1816  for  twenty-two  nights,  bringing  the  author 
;^iooo,  and  the  printed  play  reached  the  seventh  edition  within  the 
year.  Among  Maturin's  other  works  were  "  The  Fatal  Revenge" 
(1807),  "  Manuel  "  (Drury  Lane,  1817)  "  Fredolfo  "  (Covent  Garden. 
1817),  and  his  once  famous  romance,  "  Melmoth  the  Wanderer" 
(1820),  see  ante,  p.  249. 


7he  German  Tributary.  421 

in  Germany  of  the  translations  of  Young's  "  Night 
Thoughts,"  Hervey's  "  Meditations,"  and  Richardson's 
"Clarissa  Harlowe."  "Add  the  ruined  castles,  the 
dungeons,  the  trap-doors,  the  skeletons,  the  flesh-and. 
blood  ghosts,  and  the  perpetual  moonshine  of  a  modern 
author*  (themselves  the  literary  brood  of  the  'Castle 
of  Otranto, '  the  translations  of  which,  with  the  imita- 
tions and  improvements  aforesaid,  were  about  that 
time  beginning  to  make  as  much  noise  in  Germany  as 
their  originals  were  making  in  England),  and,  as  the 
compound  of  these  ingredients  duly  mixed,  you  will 
recognize  the  so-called  German  Drama,"  which  "is 
English  in  its  origin,  English  in  its  materials,  and 
English  by  readoption;  and  till  we  can  prove  that 
Kotzebue,  or  any  of  the  whole  breed  of  Kotzebues, 
whether  dramatists  or  romantic  writers  or  writers  of 
romantic  dramas,  were  ever  admitted  to  any  other 
shelf  in  the  libraries  of  well-educated  Germans  than 
were  occupied  by  their  originals  .  .  .  in  their  mother 
country,  we  should  submit  to  carry  our  own  brat  on 
our  own  shoulders." 

Germany,  rather  than  Italy  or  Spain,  became  under 
these  influences  for  a  time  the  favored  country  of 
romance.  English  tale-writers  chose  its  forests  and 
dismantled  castles  as  the  scenes  of  their  stories  of 
brigandage  and  assassination.  One  of  the  best  of  a 
bad  class  of  fictions,  ^.  ^. ,  was  Harriet  Lee's  "The 
German's  Tale:  Kruitzner,"  in  the  series  of  "Canter- 
bury Tales"  written  in  conjunction  with  her  sister 
Sophia  (i  797-1805).  Byron  read  it  when  he  was 
fourteen,  was  profoundly  impressed  by  it,  and  made 
it  the  basis  of  "  Werner,"  the  only  drama  of  his  which 

*  Mrs.  Radcliffe. 


422  c^  History  of  English  'T^omanticism. 

had  any  stage  success.  "Kruitzner"  is  conceived 
with  some  power,  but  monotonously  and  ponderously 
written.  The  historic  period  is  the  close  of  the  Thirty 
Years'  War.  It  does  not  depend  mainly  for  its  effect 
upon  the  time-honored  "Gothic"  machinery,  though 
it  makes  a  moderate  use  of  the  sliding  panel  and 
secret  passage  once  again. 

We  are  come  to  the  gate  of  the  new  century,  to  the 
date  of  the  "Lyrical  Ballads"  (1798)  and  within  sight 
of  the  Waverley  novels.  Looking  back  over  the  years 
elapsed  since  Thomson  put  forth  his  "Winter,"  in 
1726,  we  ask  ourselves  what  the  romantic  movement 
in  England  had  done  for  literature;  if  indeed  that 
deserves  to  be  called  a  "movement"  which  had  no 
leader,  no  programme,  no  organ,  no  theory  of  art,  and 
very  little  coherence.  True,  as  we  have  learned  from 
the  critical  writings  of  the  time,  the  movement,  such 
as  it  was,  was  not  all  unconscious  of  its  own  aims  and 
directions.  The  phrase  "School  of  Warton  "  implies 
a  certain  solidarity,  and  there  was  much  interchange 
of  views  and  some  personal  contact  between  men  who 
were  in  literary  sympathy;  some  skirmishing,  too, 
between  opposing  camps.  Gray,  Walpole,  and  Mason 
constitute  a  group,  encouraging  each  other's  studies 
in  their  correspondence  and  occasional  meetings. 
Shenstone  was  interested  in  Percy's  ballad  collections, 
and  Gray  in  Warton's  "  History  of  English  Poetry." 
Akenside  read  Dyer's  "  Fleece,"  and  Gray  read 
Beattie's  "Minstrel"  in  MS.  The  Wartons  were 
friends  of  Collins;  Collins  a  friend  and  neighbor  of 
Thomson;  and  Thomson  a  frequent  visitor  at  Hagley 
and  the  Leasowes.  Chatterton  sought  to  put  Rowley 
under  Walpole's  protection,    and    had  his  verses   ex- 


The  German  Tributary.  423 

amined  by  Mason  and  Gray.  Still,  upon  the  whole, 
the  English  romanticists  had  little  community;  they 
worked  individually  and  were  scattered  and  isolated 
as  to  their  residence,  occupations,  and  social  affilia- 
tions. It  does  not  appear  that  Gray  ever  met  Collins, 
or  the  Wartons,  or  Shenstone  or  Akenside;  nor  that 
MacPherson,  Clara  Reeve,  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  and  Chatter- 
ton  ever  saw  each  other  or  any  of  those  first  mentioned. 
There  was  none  of  that  united  purpose  and  that  eager 
partisanship  which  distinguished  the  Parisian  cdnacle 
whose  history  has  been  told  by  Gautier,  or  that 
Romantische  Schule  whose  members  have  been  so 
brilliantly  sketched  by  Heine. 

But  call  it  a  movement,  or  simply  a  drift,  a  trend; 
what  had  it  done  for  literature?  In  the  way  of  stimu- 
lus and  preparation,  a  good  deal.  It  had  relaxed  the 
classical  bandages,  widened  the  range  of  sympathy, 
roused  a  curiosity  as  to  novel  and  diverse  forms  of  art, 
and  brought  the  literary  mind  into  a  receptive,  expect- 
ant attitude  favorable  to  original  creative  activity. 
There  never  was  a  generation  more  romantic  in  temper 
than  that  which  stepped  upon  the  stage  at  the  close 
of  the  eighteenth  century:  a  generation  fed  upon 
"  Ossian "  and  Rousseau  and  "The  Sorrows  of 
Werther"and  Percy's  "  Reliques"  and  Mrs.  Radcliffe's 
romances.  Again,  in  the  department  of  literary  and 
antiquarian  scholarship  much  had  been  accomplished. 
Books  like  Tyrwhitt's  "Chaucer"  and  Warton's 
"  History  of  English  Poetry  "  had  a  real  importance, 
while  the  collection  and  preservation  of  old  English 
poetry,  before  it  was  too  late,  by  scholars  like  Percy, 
Ritson,  Ellis,  and  others  was  a  pious  labor. 

But  if  we  inquire  what  positive  additions  had  been 


424  a//  History  of  English  %ojnanticism. 

made  to  the  modern  literature  of  England,  the  reply 
is  disappointing.  No  one  will  maintain  that  the 
Rowley  poems,  "Caractacus,"  "The  Monk,"  "The 
Grave  of  King  Arthur,"  "  The  Friar  of  Orders  Gray," 
"The  Castle  of  Otranto,"  and  "The  Mysteries  of 
Udolpho  "  are  things  of  permanent  value:  or  even 
that  "The  Bard,"  "The  Castle  of  Indolence,"  and 
the  "  Poems  of  Ossian  "  take  rank  with  the  work  done 
in  the  same  spirit  by  Coleridge,  Scott,  Keats,  Rossetti, 
and  William  Morris.  The  two  leading  British  poets 
of  the  j^n  du  slide,  Cowper  and  Burns,  were  not  among 
the  romanticists.  It  was  left  for  the  nineteenth 
century  to  perform  the  work  of  which  the  eighteenth 
only  prophesied. 


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i 


I 


INDEX. 


Abhandlung  von  dem  Wunder- 
baren,  374 

Abuse  of  Traveling,  The,  84, 
89 

Account  of  the  English  Dra- 
matic Poets,  An,  69 

Account  of  the  Greatest  Eng- 
lish Poets,  An,  80 

Account  of  Wm.  Canynge's 
Feast,  344,  355 

Adams,  Jean,  95 

Addison,  Joseph,  35,  37,  40-42, 
45,  46,  49-52,  55-57.  80,  120, 
126,  139,  141,  148,  152,  178, 
179,  181,  210,  218,  219,  223, 
226-28,  283-85,  377,  382,  388, 
408 

Adelniorn,  409 

Adonais,  98,  370 

Adventurer,  The,  207 

Adventures  of  a  Star,  353 

^Ua,  344,  346,  349,  363-65, 

367 

^neid,  The,  56,  328 

jEsop's  Fables,  84 

Agamemnon,  75 

Agnes  Bernauerin,  399 

Aiken,  Lucy,  391,  397 

Akenside,  Mark,  52,  75,  84,  85, 
91,  102,  106,  124,  136,  139-42, 
145,  157,  159,  168,  215,  228, 
235.  403,  422,  423 

Albion's  Triumph,  85 

Alfieri,  Vittorio,  3 

Alley,  The,  80 

AUibone's  Dictionary  of  Au- 
thors, 392,  393 

Alonzo  the  Brave,  415 

Alps,  The,  182 

Ambrosio,  see  the  Monk. 


Amherst,  Alicia,  119,  123 

Amis  et  Amile,  64 

Ancient  Armor,  189 

Ancient  Lays,  326 

Ancient  Mariner,  The,  18,  262, 

269,  299,  369,  394,  419 
Ancient  Songs,  293 
Anecdotes  of  Painting,  230,  351 
Annus  Mirabilis,  137 
Another  Original  Canto,  84 
Anti-Jacobin,  The,  402,  403 
Antiquities  of  Scotland,  187 
Apology  for  Smectymnuus,  146 
Apuleius,  Lucius,  16,  220 
Arcadia,  The  Countess  of  Pem- 
broke's, 239 
Archimage,  84 
Architectura  Gothica,  181 
Ardinghello,  400 
Argenis,  241,  242 
Argument  against  Abolishing 

Christianity,  42 
Ariosto,  Lodovico,  25,  100,  219, 

222,  225,  226 
Aristotle,    19,    38,    51,    55,   274, 

276 
Arme  Heinrich,  Der,  64 
Armstrong,  Jno.,  106,  124 
Arnold's  Chronicle,  274 
Arnold,  Matthew,  71,  173,  315, 

389,  408 
Ars  Poetica,  47 
Art  of  Preserving  Health,  124 
Art  Poetique,  L',  47 
Aspects  of  Poetry,  315 
Atalanta  in  Calydon,  35 
Athalie,  217 

Atlantic  Monthly,  The,  11 
Aucassin  et  Nicolete,  64,  189, 

221 


435 


436 


Index. 


Austen,  Jane,  263 
Aytoun,  Wm.  E.,  269 


Beth  Gelert,  391 
Biographia  Literaria,  59,  420 
Black-eyed  Susan,  57,  273 
Babes  in  the  Wood,  see  Chil-    Blacklock,  Thos.,  85,  333 

dren  in  the  Wood.  Blair,  Hugh,  309,  313,  320,  335 

Babo,  Joseph  M.,  398  Blair,  Robert,  163,  164,  251 

Bacon,  Francis,  8,  120  y^\ake,  Wm.,  28,  164,  365,  366, 

Bagehot,  Walter,  17  372 

Bailey's  Dictionary.  360  Blenheim,  104 

Ballads  that  Illustrate  Shaks-    Boccaccio,  Giovanni,  28,  29,  49 

pere,  284  Bodmer,  J.  J.,  374,  375 

Ballantyne's  Novelist's  Libra-    Boiardo,  M.  M.,  25,  100 

ry,  249  Boileau-Despreaux,  N.,  35,  38, 

Balzac,  Honore  de,  249  47,  49,  65,  212,  214,  226,  227 

Banks  of  Yarrow,  The,  274  Bolingbroke,  Henry  St.  John, 

Bannatyne,  Geo.,  284  Viscount,  41,  135,  382 

Banville,  Theodore  F.  de.  373      Bonny   Earl  of  Murray,   The, 
Baour-Lormian,  P.  M.    F.  L.,       300 

337  Bonny  George  Campbell,  275 

Barbauld,  Anna  L.,  391  Borck,  C.  von,  377 

Barclay,  Jno.,  241  Bossuet,  J.  B.,  38 

Bard,  The,   173,   193,  194,  196,    Boswell,  Jas.,  94,  105,  139,  150, 

424  174.  288,  312,  320,  355 

Barrett,   Wm.,   348,    354,    364,    Botanic  Garden,  The,  99 

367  Bouhours,  Dominique,  49,  227 

Bartholin,  Thos.,  191,  196  Bowles,  W.  L.,  420 

Battle  of   Hastings,  The,  345,    Boy  and  the  Mantle,  The,  300 

346,  348,  364,  365  Boyesen,  H.  H.,  23 

Battle  of  Otterburn,  The,  278       Braes  of  Yarrow,  The,  61,  297 
Bayly,  T.  H.,  254  Brandl,  Alois,  391-93 

Beattie,  Jas.,  85,  97,   166,   186,    Bravo  of  Venice,  The,  409 
242,  245-47,  251,  302-05,  422       Brentano,  Clemens,  384,  402 


Bristowe    Tragedy,  The,    346, 

349.  366,  370 
Brockes,  B.  H.,  106 
Brown,  "  Capability,"  124,  130 
Brown,  Chas.  B.,  403 
Brown     Robyn's     Confession, 

278 


Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  284 
Beauties    of    Shakspere,   The, 

377 
Beckford,  Wm.,  403,  405 

Bedingfield,  Thos.,  85,  97,  215 
Bell,  Edward,  340,  342 
Bell  of  Arragon,  The,  172 
Belle    Dame   sans  Merci,    La,    Browne,  Sir  Thos.,  40,  66 

299  Browne,  Wm.,  79 

Bell's    Fugitive     Poetry,  159,    Browning,  Robert,  43 

161  Brunetiere,  Ferdinand,  2,  5,  11, 

Bentham,  Jas,  180  14 

Beowulf,  25,  318  Bryant,  Jacob,  356 

Beresford,  Jas.,  391  Brydges,  Saml.  Egerton,  336 

Berkeley,  Geo.,  31  Buchanan,  Robt.,  272 

Bernart  de  Ventadour,  64  Btirger,   G.   A.,   279,   289,  301, 

Bertram,  420  375,  376,  382,  389-97.  416,  417 


Index.  437 

Burney,  Francis,  252  Castles  of    Athlin    and    Dun- 
Burning  Babe,  The,  41  bayne,  The,  250,  258,  261 
Burns,  Robt.,  57,  95,  112,  187,  Cath-Loda,  334 

334,  360,  424  Catalogue  of  Royal  and  Noble 

Burton,  J.  H.,  178  Authors,  230 

Burton,  Robt.,  162  Cato,  51.  218,  388 

Byron,  Geo.  Gordon,  Lord,  5,  Celtic     Literature    (Sullivan), 

16,  24,  36,  49,  78,  98,  107,  135,  315,  325 

181,    222,   229,   238,  250,  255,  Celtic  Literature,  on  the  Study 

262,  328-30,  333,  353,  362,  370,  of  (Arnold),  315 

402,  405,  406,  420,  421  Cerdick,  329 

Cervantes    Saavedra,     Miguel 

Calderon  de  la  Barca,  Pedro,  de,  244 

25  Cesarotti,  M.,  321,  337 

Caleb  Williams,  403  Champion  of  Virtue,  The,  241- 

Calverley,  C.  S.,  270  43 

Cambridge,  R.  O.,  84,  89,   92,  Chanson  de  Roland,  The,  27, 

98,  151,  228,  229  64 

Cameron,  Ewen,  335  Chappell,  Wm.,  270 

Cameron,  Julia  M.,  393  Charakteristiken,  382,  391 

Campbell,  Thos.,  142,  143  Chase,  The  (Scott),  391 

Campbell,  J.  F.,  314,  322,  323,  Chase,  The  (Somerville),  124 

325,  327  Chateaubriand,  F.  A.  de.,  255, 

Canning,  Geo.,  402,  403  332,  333 

Canterbury    Tales   (Chaucer),  Chatterton    (Jones    and    Her- 

27.  63,  35S.  359  man),  373 

Canterbury  Tales  (Lee),  421  Chatterton  (Masson),  362 

Caractacus,  190,  194,  195,  306,  Chatterton  (Vigny),  372,  373 

424  Chatterton,  Thos.,  152, 188,  211, 

Caradoc,  195  235,  245,  294,    317,  328,    339- 

Carew,  Thos.,  66  73,384,422,423 

Carey,  Henry,  57  Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  27,   28,  30, 

Caric-thura,  334  63,  66,  69,  108,  154,  188,  199, 

Carle  of  Carlisle,  The,  293  212,   213,   244,    266,  272,  279, 

Carlyle,    Thos.,  317,  330,    334,  280,   294,    301,   304,  322,  342, 

397-400  358-60,  363,  371,  382,  383,  423 

Carmen  Seculare,  35  Chesterfield,     Philip     Dormer 

Carter,  Jno.,  189  Stanhope,  Earl  of.  40,  50,  137 

Carthon,  311,  333,  335  Chevy  Chase,  274,  283-S6,  300, 

Castle  of  Indolence,  the,  75,  85,  346,  377 

92-94,   97,  104,    114,  165,  219,  Child.  F.  J.,  267,  284 

424  Child  Maurice,  292 

Castle   of    Otranto,    The,    188,  Child  of  Elle,  The,  289,  290,  301 

211,    215,    223,  229,  231,  236-  Child  Waters,  281,  295,  298,  301 

43,    247,    249,    253,    255,    340,  Childe    Harold,    98,    250,    333, 

346,    362,  367.    401,    409,  411,  334,  364 

414,  415,  421,  424  Children    in  the   Wood,    The, 

Castle  Spectre,  The,  401,  413-  273,  2S3.  2S5.  288,  302 

15  Choice  of  Hercules,  The,  85 


43  8  Index. 

Chrestien  de  Troyes,  27  Corneille,  Pierre,  38,  65,  67 

Christabel,  363,  369,  394  Corsair,  The,  334 

Christian  Ballads,  165  Cottle,  Joseph,  350,  358,  368 

Christ's  Kirk  o*  the  Green,  66  Count  of  Narbonne,  The,  240 

Churchill,  Chas.,  353  Country  Walk,  The,  142 

Cibber,  Colley,  74,  176  Cowley,   Abraham,  37,  38,  53, 
Cid,  The,  298  66,  79,  120,  228 

City  of   Dreadful  Night,  The,  Cowper,  Wm.,  53,  57,  103,  108, 

162  no,  112,  115,  424 

Clarissa  Harlowe,  252,  421  Coxe,  A.  C,  165 

Classic  and  Romantic,  11  Crabbe,  Geo.,  103 

Classiques  et  Romantiques,  2  Crashaw,  Richard,  41 

Classische  Walpurgisnacht,  385  Croft,  Herbert,  367,  368 

Claudina  von  Villa  Bella,  417  Croma,  336 

Clerk,  Archibald,  313,  320,  321,  Cromwell,  19,  35 

323,  324  Croxall,  Saml.,  84 

Clerk  Colvin,  279,  417  Crusade,  The,  199 

Clerkes  Tale,  The,  280,  281  Cumberland,  Richard,  74,  177 

Coleridge,    S.   T.,    59,   66,    73,  Cumnor  Hall,  94 

108,    110,    161,    188,  262,  265,  Cyder,  104,  124 

269,    299,    328,    363.  366,  368, 

369.    372,  376.    387.   388,  394,  Dacier,  Anne  L.,  49 

419-21,  424  Dalrymple,     Sir    David,     291, 
Colin's  Mistakes,  84  306,  336 

Collins,  Wm.,  25,  75,  104,  no,  Danmarks    Gamle  Folkeviser, 
/     112,    114,    118,    129,  136,  142,        266 

151,   155,   156,    158,    163,  165,  Dante  Alighieri,  22,  28,  29,  64, 

166,  168-72,  175,  184,  186,  193,        235 

197,   215,   251,    279,  281,  384,  Darke  Ladye,  The,  369 

403,  422,  423  Darthula,  314.  335 

Collection  of  Old  Ballads,  A.,  Darwin,  Erasmus,  99 

284  Davenant,  Wm.,  67,  74,  137,  226 

Colman,  Geo.,  Jr.,  176,  254,  417  David  Balfour,  258 

Colvin,  Sidney,  16-18  Davies,  John,  137 

Companion     to     the      Oxford  De  Anglorum  Gentis  Origine, 

Guide   Book,    202  192 

Complaint  of  Ninathoma,  The,  De        Causis       Contemnendae 

328  *  Mortis,    191 

Complete  Art  of  Poetry,  The,  De  Imitatione  Christi,  64 

69,  72  Dean  of  Lismore's  Book,  The, 
Comus,  16,  144,  149,  150,  215  314 

Conan,  195  Death  of  Calmar  and  Orla,  The, 
Concubine,  The,  85,  95  328 

Conjectures  on  Original  Com-  Death  of  Cuthullen,  The,  335 

position,  387  Death  of  Hoel,  The,  195 

Conquest  of  Granada,  The,  44  Death  of  Mr.  Pope,  85 

Contemplation,  297  Defence  of  Poesy,  72,  274 

Cooper's  Hill,  39  Defence  of  the  Epilogue  to  the 
Coriolanus,  72,  74  Conquest  of  Granada,  71 


Index.  439 

De  Foe,  Daniel,  40  Dream,  A,  85 

Demonology    and  Witchcraft,  Dream  of  Gerontius,  The,  41 

42,  189  Drummer,  The,  408 

Demosthenes,  3  Dryden,  J  no.,  27,  41,  44,  49,  50 
Deirdre,  314  -53.  62,  63,  66-68,  70,  71,  74, 

Denham,  Sir  Jno.,  39  79,  80,  104,  137,  148,  149,  177, 

Denis,  Michael,  337,  377  192,   209,   210,   212,   213,   2i6, 

Dennis,  Jno,,  49,  62,  69,  72,  74,        265,283 

285  Dugdale,  Wm.,  198 

Descent  of  Odin,  The,  191,  192,  Dunciad,  The,  34,  56 

220  ^  Diirer,  Albrecht,  162 

Deschanel,  Emile,  2  D'Urfey,  Thos.,  74 

Description  of  the   Leasowes,  Dyer,   Jno.,   75,  102,   103,   106, 

133,  139  119,    124,    142-45.    168,    215, 

Descriptive  Poem,  A,  185  422 

Deserted     Farm-house,     The,  / 

177  Early    English    Metripal    Ro- 
Deserted  Village,  The,  91,  207         mances,  301 

Deutscher     Art    und     Kunst,  Eastlake,  Sir  Chas.,  54,^5,  199, 

Einige     Fliegende     Blatter,       231-33 

von,  380,  381  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets,  145 

Dictionary    of   French   Antiq-  Edda,   The,   64,  190,  ig6,   220, 

uities,  221  313,  390 

Dictionary  of   National   Biog-  Edinburgh  Review,  The,  350, 

raphy,  359  397 

Dies  Irae,  64  Education,  85,  89,  90,  126 

Dirge  in  Cymbeline,  The,  75,  Education    of    Achilles,    The, 

163  85,  97 

Dissertatio  de  Bardis,  195  Edward,  274,  300 

Dissertation     on     Fable     and  Edwards,  Thos.,  53,  89,  161 

Romance,  242,  245-47  Effusions  of  Sensibility,  250 

Dissertation  on  the  Authentic-  Eighteenth  Century  Literature 

ity  of  Ossian,  320  (Gosse),    84,    104,    106,    163, 

Divine  Comedy,  The,  27  169,  362 

Divine  Emblems,  164  Elegant  Extracts,  211 

Dobson,  Austin,  272  Elegies  (Shenstone's),  137,  138 

Dobson,  Susannah,  221  Elegy  on  the  Death  of  Prince 
Dodd,  Wm.,  377  Frederick,  85 

Doddington,  Geo.  Bubb,  in  Elegy  to  Thyrza,  135 

Dodsley,  Jas.,  349  Elegy  Written  in  a  Churchyard 
Dodsley,    Robert,    84,  85,    132,        in  South  Wales,  176 

133,  135,  139,  209  Elegy  Written    in  a  Country 
Dodsley's  Miscellany,  137,  159,        Churchyard,     103,    137,     157, 

165  163,  167,  173-77,  204 

Don  Juan,  5,  49  Elinoure  and  Juga,   346,    352, 
Donne,  Jno.,  28,  37,  66  354 

Dorset,  Chas.    Sackville,    Earl  Ellis,  Geo.,  188,  301,  402,  423 

of,  283  Elstob,  Elizabeth,  192 

Douglas,  170,  276,  308  Emerson,  R.  W.,  66,  388 


440 


Index. 


Emilia  Galotti,  380 

Endymion,  370 

English  and  Scottish  Popular 
Ballads,  The,  267 

English  Bards  and  Scotch  Re- 
viewers, 405 

English  Garden,  The,   123-27, 

151 

English  Literature  in  the  Eight- 
eenth Century  (Perry),  7,  163, 
207,  211,  337 

English    Metamorphosis,    364, 

365 
English  Romantic  Movement, 

The     (Phelps),    84,    85,    197, 

283,  297,  329 
English    Women    of    Letters, 

249,  262 
Enid.  281 
Enquiry  into  the  Authenticity 

of  the  Rowley  Poems,  359 
Enquiry  into  the  Present  State 

of  Polite  Learning,  208 
Enthusiast,  The,  151-53,  160 
Epigoniad,  the,  89 
Epistle   of   Eloisa  to  Abelard, 

56,  157,  163,  218,  220 
Epistle  to  Augustus,  66,  69,  72, 

115 
Epistle  to  Mathew,  370 
Epistle  to  Sacheverel,  80 
Epistle  to  the  Earl  of  Burling- 
ton, 120,  129 
Epitaphium  Damonis,  146 
Epithalamium,  84 
Erl-King,  The,  386,  416 
Erskine,  Wm.,  203,  404 
Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy,  68,  70 
Essay  on  Ancient  and  Modern 

Learning,  69 
Essay  on  Criticism,  47,  50,  388 
Essay  on  Gothic  Architecture, 

180 
Essay  on  Gray  (Lowell),  209 
Essay  on  Homer,  387,  389 
Essay  on  Man,  34,  41,  113,  175 
Essay  on  Poetry,  47 
Essay  on    Pope    (Lowell),   60, 
169,  173 


Essay  on  Pope  (Warton),  97, 
118,    149,    160,   163,   185,  193, 
206,  212-20,  224 
Essay  on  Satire,  47,  80 
Essay  on  Scott,  400 
Essay  on  Shakspere,  69,  72 
Essay    on    the    Ancient    Min- 
strels, 245,  293,  302 
Essay  on  the  Rowley  Poems, 

359 
Essay  on  Truth,  303 

Essays  on  German  Literature, 

23 
Essays  on  Men  and  Manners, 

127 
Essays  on  Poetry  and  Poets, 

363 
Ethelgar,  328 
Etherege,  Geo.,  38 
Evans,  Evan,  195 
Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  The,  98,  257, 

363 
Eve  of  St.  John,  The,  417 
Eve    of    St.    Mark,  The,    177, 

371 
Evelina,  243,  252 
Evelyn,  Jno.,  7 
Evergreen,  The,  284,  286 
Excellente  Ballade  of  Charitie, 

An,  366 
Excursion,  The  (Mallet),  124 
Excursion,  The  (Wordsworth), 

304 

Fables,  (.<Esop),  84 

Fables  (Drj^den),  63 

Faerie  Queene,  The,  16,  37,  66, 
77-101,  154,  215,  225,  365 

Fair  Annie,  281,  295 

Fair  Circassian,  The,  84 

Fair  Eleanor,  367 

Fair  Janet,  268 

Fair  Margaret  and  Sweet  Wil- 
liam, 268,  279,  283,  286,  300 

Farewell  Hymn  to  the  Coun- 
try, A,  85 

Fatal  Revenge,  The,  249,  420 

Fatal  Sisters,  The,  191 

Faust,  27,  141,  384,  385,  401 


Index. 


441 


Fergusson,  Jas.,  233 
Feudal  Tyrants,  409 
Fichte,  J.  G.,  387 
Fielding,    Henry,    26,    40,    76, 

383 
Filicaja,  Vincenzio,  49 
Fingal,  309,  311,  313,  317,  322, 

324.  335.  336,  338 
Fire  King,  The,  417 
First  Impressions  of  England, 

109,  133 
Fischer,  Der,  386 
Fisher,  The,  416 
Five  English  Poets,  372 
Five  Pieces  of  Runic  Poetry, 

190 
Flaming  Heart,  The,  41 
Fleece,  The,  124,  144,  145,  422 
Fleshly  School  of  Poets,  The, 

272 
Fletcher,  Giles,  78 
Fletcher,  Jno.,  25,  51,  79,  117, 

162,  210 
Fletcher,  Phineas,  78 
Ford,  Jno.,  241 
Foreign  Review,  The,  398 
Forsaken  Bride,  The.  280 
Fouque,  F.  de  la  M.,  4,  26,  384 
Fragments  of  Ancient  Poetry, 

306,    307,    309,  311,  323,   326, 

328,  336 
Frankenstein,  401,  403,  406 
Frederick  and  Alice,  416 
Frederick,  Prince  of  Wales,  84, 

137 
Fredolfo,  420 
Freneau,  Philip,  177 
Friar  of  Orders  Grey,  The,  298, 

301,  424 
Froissart,  Jean,  27,  64,  236 
From   Shakspere  to  Pope,  39, 

60 
Frlihling,  Der,  106 
Fuller,  Thos.,  28 
Furnivall,  F.  J.,  292 
Fust  von  Stromberg,  399 

Gammer  Gurton's  Needle,  293 
Gandalin,  381 


Gang  nach  dem  Eisenhammer, 

Der,  386 
"Garlands,"  The,  284 
Garrick,  David,  162,  209,  287 
Gaston  de  Blondville,  250,  259- 

62 
Gates,  L.  E.,  41,  44 
Gautier,  Theophile,  372,  423 
Gay  Goshawk,  The,  279 
Gay,  Jno.,  35,  57,  273 
Gebir,  18,  245 
Gedicht    eines    Skalden,    190, 

377 
Genie   du    Christianisme,    Le, 

332 
Gentle  Shepherd,  The,  79 
Georgics,  The,  iii 
German's  Tale,  The,  421 
Geron  der  Adeliche,  381 
Gerstenberg,  H.   W.  von,  190, 

377.  387 
Geschichte      der       Deutschen 
Literatur  (Hettner)  300,  378, 

387 
Geschichte      der     Kunst     des 

Alterthums,  384 
Ghost-Seer,  The,  419 
Gierusalemme     Liberata,    214, 

225 
Gilderoy,  283 

Gildon,  Chas.,  49,  62,  69,  72 
Giles  Jollop,  418 
Gil  Maurice,  276 
Gilpin,  Wm.,  185 
Glanvil,  Joseph,  390,  408 
Gleim,  J.  W.  L.,  375 
Glenfinlas,  417 
Goddwyn,  344,  363-65 
Godred  Crovan,  329 
Godwin,  Wm.,  403 
Goethe,   Johann   Wolfgang,  3, 

4,   II,  31,  141,  252,  255,  275, 

330,  334,  377-81,  384-87,   389, 

397-99,  404,  409,  416,  417 
"Gottinger  Hain,"  The,  378 
Gotz    von     Berlichingen,    334, 

375.    380,    381,    385.    393-404, 

418 
Golden  Ass,  The,  16 


442 


Index. 


Golden  Treasury,  The,  57,  277 
Golo  und  Genoveva,  399 
\Goldsmith,  Oliver,  76,  gi,   112, 
113,  162,  177,  186,  207-11,  287, 

354 
Gondibert,  137 
Goi'thmund,  329 
Gosse,  Edmund,  39,  53,  60,  84, 
103,    106,   163,    169,    192,    272, 
362 
Gottfried  of  Strassburg,  3,  64 
Gottsched,  J.  C,  374,  383 
Gower,  Jno.,  266,  272 
Grainger,  James,  124,  287 
Granville,  Geo.,  47 
Grave,  The,  104,  163,  164,  175 
Grave  of   King  Arthur,   The, 

199-201,  424 
Graves,  Richard,  130-33,  137 
Gray,Thos.,25,  32,  52,  53,  75,  8g, 
103,  117-19.  123,  136,  137,  139, 
145,  151,  155,  157-60,  163,  164, 
166-69,    172-85,   190-206,    199, 
201,    204,    206,    209,   211,   215, 
216,   218,    220,   221,   229,   235, 
238,  251,  276,  286,  302,  306-08, 
336,    352,    356,    362,   377.   384. 
387,  422,  423 
Green,  Matthew,  136 
Grene  Knight,  The,  293 
Grim  White  Woman,  The,  407 
Grongar  Hill,  104,  119, 142,  143, 

145 
Grose,  Francis,  187 
Grounds  of  Criticism  in  Trag- 
edy, The,  71 
Grundtvig,  Svend,  266 
Guardian,  The,  120,  126,  413 
Guest,  Lady  Charlotte,  189 
Gulliver's  Travels,  26 
Gummere,  F.  B.,  276 
Gwin,  King  of  Norway,  367 

Hagley,  108,  log,  122,   127,  131, 

133,  136,  183,  303,  422 
Hales,  J.  W.,  289,  290 
Hallam,  Henry,  189 
Haraburgische      Dramaturgic, 

379»  387 


Hamilton,  Wm.,  61,  279 
Hamlet,  387,  401 
Hammond,  Jas.,  137 
Hardyknut,  286 
Harper's  Daughters,  The,  409 
Hartmann  von  Aue,  64,  381 
Harvey,  Geo.,  336 
Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  403 
Haystack   in  the  Flood,   The, 

299,  363 
Hayward,  A.,  234 
Hazlitt,  Wm.,  161^254 

-^faztrffrwrc.,  205 

Hearne,  Thos.,  201 
Hedge,  F.  H.,  11,  14,  16 

Heilas,  The,  329 
Heilige  Vehm,  Der,  418 
Heine,  Heinrich,  2,  24,  330,  402, 

423 
Heir  of  Lynne,  The,  290 
Helen  of  Kirkconnell,  274 
Heliodorus,  244 
Hellenics,  3 
Henriade,    The,    50,  214,   216, 

217 
Henry  and  Emma,  295,  296 
Herbert,  Geo.,  28,  66,  228 
Herd,  David,  299 
Herder,  J.  G.  von,  274,  300,  301, 

337,   376,   378,   380,    384,    387, 

389,  416 
Hermann  und  Dorothea,  4,  385 
Hermit    of    Warkworth,   The, 

186,  289,  294,  298 
Hermit,  The  (Beattie),  186,  305 
Hermit,  The  (Goldsmith),  113, 

186 
Hermit,  The  (Parnell),  186 
Herrick,  Robert,  66 
Hervarer  Saga,  The,  192 
Hervey,  Jas.,  421 
Hettner,  H.  J.  T.,  378,  379,  381, 

383,  387 
Hicks,  Geo.,  192,  193 
Hill,  Aaron,  217 
Hind  and  the    Panther,  The, 

41 
Histoire   de    Dannemarc,    190, 
221,  377 


Index.  443 

Histoire  des  Troubadours,  221,  House  of  Aspen,  The,  418 

222  House    of    Superstition,    The, 
Histoire  du  Romantisme,  372  85 

Historical  Anecdotes  of  Heral-  "  How  Sleep  the  Brave,"  168 

dry,  and  Chivalry,  221  Howitt,  Wm.,  133,  134,  364 

Historic  Doubts,  230  Hugo,  Victor  Marie,  3,  19,  35, 
Historic    Survey    of     German       36,  77,  115,  209 

Poetry,  397,  398,  418  Hume,  Robert,  100,  303,  308 

Historic    of    Peyncteynge    in  Hunting  of  the  Cheviot,  The, 

England,  351  <.  -^,  278,  295 

History  of  Architecture,  233  Huon  of  Bordeaux,  382 

History  of  Bristol,  348,  364  Hurd,  Richard,  221-26,  245,  246, 
History  of  Charoba,  Queen  of       375,  387 

Egypt,  245  ";  \  Hussar    of    Magdeburg,    The, 

History  of   England    (HunW;        393  y 

100  /  Hymn  (Thomson),  106 

History  of  English  Literatjure  Hymn  to  Adversity,  167,  173 

(Taine),  316  ^     \  Hymn  to  Divine  Love,  85 

History     of     English     Poetry  Hymn  to  May,  85 

(Warton),    36,  205,    206,  2it,  Hymn  to  the  Supreme  Being, 

245,  260,  359,  432,  423  85 

History  of  English  Thought  in  Hyperion,  35 

the  Eighteenth  Century,  32,  A-^ 

41  Idler,  The.  207  i 

History  of  Gardening,  119,  123  Idyls  of  the  King,  The,  146 

Historj'-  of  German  Literature  II  Bellicoso,  153 

(Scherer),  374,  380,  382,  385,  II  Pacifico,  153,  154 

394  II  Penseroso,  104,  115,  142,  147, 
History    of    Opinion    on    the        149,    150,    154,    162,    170,   175, 

Writings  of  Shakspere,  74  334 

History  of  Santon  Barsisa,  413  Iliad,   The,   16,  36,  56,  58,  214, 
History  of  the  Gothic  Revival,        269,  313,  338,  388,  389 

54.  55.  231  Imaginary  Conversations,    18, 
Hobbes,  Thos.,  226  43 

Holty,  L.  H.  C,  375  Immortality,  85 

Hole,  R.,  336  Indian  Burying  Ground,  The, 
Home,  Jno.,  132,  170,  276,  308,        177 

309  Indian  Emperor,  The,  44 

Homer,  3,  25,  35.  37,  50,  55,  100,  Ingelow,  Jean,  270 

no,  215,  222-24,  271,  284,  285,  Inscription  for  a  Grotto,  136 

310,  313,    318,   330,    335,    376,  Institution  of  the  Order  of  the 

387-89  Garter,  159,  193,  194 

Homes  of  the  Poets,  133,  364  Introduction  to  the  Lusiad,  85 

Horace,  38,  47,  55.  72,  156,  223,  Iphigenie  auf  Tauris,   3,   385, 

2S5,  4"  397 

Houghton,  J.  Monckton  Milnes,  Ireland,  Wm.    H.,  77,294 

Lord,  370  Irene,  51 

Hours  in  a  Library,  235  Isis,  176 

Hours  of  Idleness,  329  Italian,  The,  250,  252,  263 


444 


Index. 


Italienische  Reise,  385" 
Ivanhoe,  4,  23,   188,   237,  262, 
404 

Jamieson,  Robert,  292 
Jane  Shore,  286 
January  and  May,  63 
Jemmy  Dawson,  273 
Jephson,  Robert,  240 
Jew's  Daughter,  The,  300 
Jock  o'    Hazeldean,   269,   277, 

363 

Johnnie  Armstrong,  274,  278, 
283 

Johnnie  Cock,  279,  280 

Johnson,  Saml.,  37,  40,  50,  51, 
53,  54,  56,  59,  66,  68,  70,  71, 
89,  90.  94,  97,  99.  104.  105,  113, 
131,  132,  136-39,  144,  145,  150. 
151,  172-75,  177, 179,  186,  196- 
98,  207,  224,  243,  274,  285, 
287-89,  295,  302,  303,  312,  313, 
320,  328,  354,  355 

Toinville,  Jean  Sire  de,  27,   64 

Jones,  Inigo,  121,  230 

Jonson,  Ben,  25,  50,  71,  79,  97, 
210,  285 

Jordan,  The,  85 

Journal  in  the  Lakes,  183,  184 

Journey  through  Holland,  257 

Joyce,  R.  D.,  314 

Julius  Caesar,  377 

Junius,  Letters  of,  353 

Kabale  und  Liebe,  409 

Kalewala,  The,  313 

Kampf  mit  dem  Drachen,  Der, 

386 
Kant,  Immanuel,  31,  387 
Katharine  Janfarie,  277 
Kavanagh,  Julia,  249,  262 
Keate,  Geo.,  182 
Keats,  Jno.,  18,  35,  94,  107, 169, 

177,  257,   262,   265,   353,  362, 

363,  370-72,  424 
Keepsake,  The,  418 
Kemp  Owen,  279 
Kenil worth,  94,  260 
Kenrick,  329 


Kent,  Wm.,  129,  135,  152 
Kersey's  Dictionary,  360,  361 
King  Arthur's  Death,  278 
King  Estmere,  279,  300 
King  John  and  the  Abbot,  301 
Kinmont  Willie,  278 
Kittridge,  G.  L.,  191,  192 
Kleist,  E.  C.  von,  106 
Klinger,  F,  M.,  379 
Klopstock,  F.  G.,  338,  377 
Knight,  Chas.,  74 
Knight  of  the  Burning  Pestle, 

The,  284 
Knox,  v.,  211,  212,  228 
Knythinga  Saga,  The,  196 
Kotzebue,  A.   F.   F.  von,  400, 

409,  421 
Kriegslied,  377 
Kruitzner,  421,  422 

La  Bruyere,  Jean  de,  138 

La  Calprenede,  G.  de  C.  Chev- 
alier de,  6 

Lachin  Y  Gair,  329 

Lady  Anne  Bothwell's  Lament, 
283 

Lady  of    the   Lake,   The,   96, 

299-  399 
La  Fontaine,  Jean  de,  38 
Laing,  Malcolm,  318,  320,  329 
L'Allegro,    104,    129,    142,   144, 

147,  149,  150,  154,  158,  170 
Lamartine,  A.  M.  L.  de,  176 
Lamb,  Chas.,  28,  161,  199 
Land  of  Liberty,  85 
Land  of  the  Muses,  The,  85 
Lander,   W.  S.,   3,    18,  34,  42, 

136,  245,  293 
Lang,  Andrew,  272 
Langbaine,  Gerard,  49, 62, 69,  71 
Langley,  Batty,  54,  i2t,  233 
Lansdowne,    Geo.     Granville, 

Earl  of,  47,  74 
Laocoon,  384,  387 
Lass  of  Fair  Wone,  The,  397 
Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,  The, 

165,  191,  336.  404 
Lays  of    Ancient  Rome,    269, 
298 


Index. 


445 


Lays  of  the  Scottish  Cavaliers, 

269 
Leabhar  na  Feinne,  314,  323 
Lear,  217 
Leasowes,   The,     127,     130-37, 

139,  152,  183,  213,  422 
Le  Bossu,  Rene,  49 
Lectures        on       Translating 

Homer,  389 
Legend  of  Sir  Guy,  278 
Legenda  Aurea,  3 
Lee,  Harriet  and  Sophia,  421 
Le  Lac,  176 
Leland,  Thos.,  244,  247 
Leland's  Collectanea,  260 
Lenora,  391-97.  4i5,  417 
Lenox,  Charlotte,  70 
Lenz,  J,  M.  R.,  379,  387 
Leonidas,  337 
Lessing,   G.    E.,   56,   300,   375, 

376,  379.  380.  384,  387,  397 
Letourneur,  Pierre,  337 
Letter  from  Italy,  57,  218 
Letter  to  Master  Canynge,  344 
Letters  on   Chivalry  and   Ro- 
mance, 221-26,  245 
Letters    to    Shenstone,    Lady 

Luxborough's,  135,  229 
Lettres  de  Dupuis  et  Cotonet, 

18-22 
Lewis,  M.  G.,  249,  252,  262,  376, 

394.  396,  400,  401,  404-18,  420 
Leyden,  Jno.,  417 
Library  of  Romance,  381 
Life  of  Lyttelton  (Phillimore), 

74,  108 
Lines  on  Observing  a  Blossom, 

368 
Lines  Written  at  Tintern  Ab- 
bey, 140 
Literary  Movement  in  France, 

The,  35,  44,  61 
Literatura  Runica,  191 
Little     Musgrave     and     Lady 

Barnard,  283 
Lives    of    the    English    Poets 

(Winstanley),  69 
Lives  of  the  Novelists  (Scott), 

262 


Lives  of  the  Poets  (Johnson), 

51,  68,  90,  97,   105,  114,  131, 

139,  150,  172,  196,  286 
Lloyd.  Robert,  85,  91,  98,  151, 

176 
Lockhart,  J.  G.,  29S,  391,  398, 

402,  403,  406 
Longfellow,    H.  W.,   198,   199, 

269 
Longinus,  38 
Longsword,  Earl  of  Salisbilpy, 

244,  247,  248 
Lord  Lovel,  268 
Lord  Randall,  275 
Lord  Thomas  and  Fair  Annet, 

268 
Lotus  Eaters,  The,  18,  92 
Love  and  Madness,  368 
Love's  Labour's  Lost,  379 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  27,   59,  114,  139, 

144,  169,  173,  206,  209,  403 
Lowth,  Robert,  85,  387 
Liirlei,  Die,  402 
Lukens,  Chas.,  393 
Lusiad,  The,  85,  94 
Lycidas,  37,  115,  145,  149,   150, 

154,  192 
Lydgate,  Jno.,  206,  266,  344,  359 
Lyrical   Ballads,    58,    109,   112, 

160,    183,    218,  288,    299,  316, 

422 
Lytel   Geste  of  Robyn   Hode, 

The.  274 
Lyttelton,  Geo.    Lord,  90,  91, 

95,  108,  III,  121, 127, 131,132, 

135-37,  303 

Mabinogion,  The,  189 
Macaulay,  T.   B.,   69,  238,  269, 

272,  298 
Macbeth,  223 
McClintock,  W.  D.,  102 
Mackenzie,  Henry,  252,  390 
Mackenzie,  Jno.,  321 
McLauchlan,  Thos.,  314 
Macmillan's  Magazine,  326 
McNeil,  Archibald,  326 
MacPherson,  Jas.,  24,  195,  294, 

302,  306-3S,  377,  423 


446 


Index. 


Madden,  Sir  Frederick,  292 
Malherbe,  Frangois  de,  38 
Mallet,  David,  75,  105,  106,124, 

235,  283,  286 
Mallet,    P.    H.,    190,   191,    196, 

221,  374,  377 
Malone,  Edmond,  32,  356,  362 
Malory,  Sir  Thos.,  27 
Manfred.  334 

Man  of  Feeling,  The,  252,  390 
Mansus,  146 
Manuel,  420 
Map,  Walter,  27 
Marble  Faun,  The,  23 
Mariner's  Wife,  The,  95 
Marlowe,  Christopher,  66 
Marmion,  203,  234,  258,  336,  399, 

404,  411 
Marriage  of  Frederick,  84 
Marriage  of  Gawaine,  The,  278 
Mary  Hamilton,  280 
Mason,   Wm.,    85,    91,    123-27, 

129,  151,  153-55.  160,  165,  167, 

176,  180,  183, 190,  194-96,  211, 

213,  215,   221,   251,  276,  306, 

307,  337.  352,422,  423 
Masson,  David,  148,  362 
Mather,  Cotton,  408 
Mathias,  Thos.  J.,  393 
Maturin,    Chas.    Robert,    249, 

420 
Meditations  (Harv^ey)  421 
Melmoth    the  Wanderer,    249, 

420 
Memoires  sur  I'ancienne   Che- 

valerie,  221,  222 
Memoirs  of  a  Sad  Dog.  353 
Mendez,  Moses,  85,  91,  159 
Menschenhass  und  Reue,  400 
Merchant  of  Venice,  The,  372 
Meyrick,  Sir  Saml.  R.,  189 
Michael.  4 

Mickle,  Wm.  J.,  85,  94-96 
Middle  Ages,  The  (Hallam)  189 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  A, 

76,  235,  382 
Miller  and  the  King's  Daughter, 

The,  283 
Miller,  Johann  M.,  375,  400 


Miller,  Hugh,  108,  109, 130, 133, 

136 
Milles,  Jeremiah,  356,  361 
Milnes,  R.  Monckton,  370 
Milton,  Jno.,  16,  34,  37,  40,  52, 
53.  55.  56,  63,  66,  69,  78,  79,  94, 
104,    no.   III,    115,   129,    140, 
142,  144,  146-62,  170,  173,  193, 
199,    212,   213,   215,   216,   218, 
219,   222,   225,   244,   265,   283, 

297.  318,  371,  374,  391 

Miltonic  Imitations  in  Dodsley, 
List  of,  159-61 

Minister,  The,  409 

Minnesingers,  The,  375 

Minot,  Lawrence,  293 

Minstrel,  The,  85,  97,  245,  302- 
05,  422. 

Minstrelsy,  Ancient  and  Mod- 
ern, 270 

Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Bor- 
der, 262,  267,  277,  299,  404. 

Mirror,  The,  85 

Miscellany  Poems  (Dryden), 
192,  283 

Miss  Kitty,  393 

Modern  Painters,  26,  34 

Moser,  Justus,  375,  380 

Moliere,  J.  B.  P.,  38 

Monasticon,  Anglican um,  198 

Monk,  The,  249,  262,  263,  401, 
404,  407-13.  420,  424 

Monody  on  the  Death  of  Chat- 
terton,  368 

Monody  Written  near  Strat- 
ford-upon-Avon, 201 

Monologue,  A,  176 

Montagu,    Elizabeth   R.,    303, 

337 
Monthly  Magazine,   The,  391, 

392 
Monthly  Review,  The,  397 
Moral  Essays,  220 
More,  Hannah,  151 
Morning,  85 

Morris,  Wm.,  191,  203,  424 
Morte  Artus,  64,  390 
Motherwell,  Wm.,  270,  299 
Mud  King,  The,  418 


Index. 


447 


Miiller,  Friedrich,  399 
Miiller,  Johannes,  376 
Mulgrave,  Jno.  Sheffield,  Earl 

of,  47,  63 
'   Murdoch,  Patrick,  105 
Musaeus,  85,  153-55 
Musen  Almanach,  393 
Musset,  Alfred  de,  18-22 
Myller,  C.  H.,  375 
Mysterious  Mother,  The,  237, 

238,  241,  251,  253,  401,  409 
Mysteries    of    Udolpho,    The, 

250,  252-55,  262,  263,  401,  424 

Nares'  and  Halliwell's  Glos- 
sary, i8g 

Nathan  der  Weise,  376,  397 

Nativity,  The,  85 

Nature,  388 

Nature  of  Poetry,  The,  162 

New  Canto  of  Spenser's  Fairy 
Queen,  A,  84,  85 

Newman,  F.  W.,  389 

Newman,  J.  H.,  41 

New  Memoirs  of  Milton,  149 

New  Principles  of  Gardening, 
121 

Nibelungen  Lied,  The,  25,  64, 

313.  375,  376 
Nichols'  Anecdotes,  192 
Night  Piece  on  Death,  61,  177 
Night  Thoughts,  104,  163,  175, 

387.  421 
Noble  Moringer,  The,  418 
Nocturnal  Reverie,  57,  61 
Noel,  Roden,  363 
Nonne  Prestes  Tale,  The,  28 
Northanger  Abbey,  263,  264 
Northern  Antiquities,  190 
Northumberland  Betrayed   by 

Douglas,  278 
Nosce  Teipsum,  137 
Not-brown  Maid,  The,  274,  295, 

296,  300,  302 
Notes     and     Illustrations     to 

Ossian,  318 
Notes  on  the  Authenticity  of 

Ossian's  Poems,  326 
Notre  Dame  de  Paris,  3 


Nouvelle  Heloise,  La,  31 
Novalis,  384 

Oberon,  382 

Observations  on  English 
Meter,  206 

Observations  on  Modern  Gar- 
dening (Whately),  123 

Observations  on  The  Faery 
Queene,  99-101,  204,  213,  223 

Observations  on  The  Scenery 
of  Great  Britain,  185 

Observations  upon  the  Poems 
of  Thomas  Rowley,  356 

Odes,  (Akenside's),  142 

Odes,  (Collins'),  142,  155,  156 

Odes,  (Gray's),  362 

Odes,  (J.  Warton's),  142,  155, 
156 

Odes,  For  the  New  Year,  199. 
On  a  Distant  Prospect  of 
Eton  College,  167,  173,  216. 
On  His  Majesty's  Birthday, 
199.  On  the  Approach  of 
Summer,  158.  On  the 
Death  of  Thomson,  163,  165, 
194.  On  the  First  of  April, 
158.  On  the  Installation  of 
the  Duke  of  Grafton,  159. 
On  the  Morning  of  Christ's 
Nativity,  147,  i49.  150,  156. 
On   the    Passions,    166,    169, 

175.  On  the  Spring,  167,  173. 
On  the  Superstitions  of  the 
Scottish  Highlands,  25,  114, 
170-72.  Sent  to  Mr.  Upton, 
201.  To  a  Grecian  Urn,  18. 
To  a  Nightingale  (Keats)  18. 
To  an  ^olus  Harp,  165.  To 
Curio,  85.  To  Evening  (Col- 
lins), 156,  165,  168.  To 
Evening  (Warton),  165.  To 
Fear,  156.  To  Freedom,  363. 
To  Liberty,  194.  To  Obliv- 
ion,     176.       To     Obscurity, 

176.  To  Peace,  305.  To 
Pyrrha,  156.  To  Simplicity, 
156.  To  Solitude,  165.  To 
the  Hon.  Charles  Townsend, 


448 


Index. 


84.     To  the  Marquis  of  Tavis- 
tock,   84.      To  the   Nightin- 
gale (Warton),   165.     To  the 
Queen,  84.     Written  at  Vale 
Royal  Abbey,  204 
Odyssey,  The,  16,  269 
CEdipus  Rex,  3,  19,  241 
Of  Heroic  Virtue,  192,  197 
Of  Poetry,  192 
Old  English  Ballads,  276 
Old  English  Baron,  The,  241- 

43,  249 

Oldmixon,  Jno.,  62 

Old  Plays  (Dodsley)  209 

Olive,  The,  84 

On  King  Arthur's  Round  Table, 
201 

On  Modern  Gardening  (Wal- 
pole),  123,  130 

On  Myself,  79 

On  Our  Lady's  Church,  344 

On  the  Prevailing  Taste  for 
the  Old  English  Poets,  211 

On  the  River  Duddon,  162 

On  Witches  (Glanvil),  408 

Opie,  Amelia,  252 

Orcades,  191 

Origin  of  Romantic  Fiction, 
The,  205 

Original  Canto  of  Spenser,  An, 
84 

Ormond,  403 

Osorio,  420 

Ossian  (MacPherson's),  25,  117, 
178,  195,  235,  245,  256,  302, 
306-38,  355,  356,  377,  378,  423, 
424 

Ossian,  Poems  of,  in  the  Orig- 
inal Gaelic  (Clerk),  313 

Ossian,  Poems  of,  in  the  Orig- 
inal Gaelic  (In  Gillie's  Collec- 
tion), 326 

Ossian,  Poems  of,  in  the  Orig- 
inal Gaelic  (Highland  So- 
ciety's Text),  321,  324,  326 

Ossian,  Poems  of,  in  the  Orig- 
inal Gaelic  (In  Stewart's 
Collection),  326 

Othello,  372 


Otto  von  Wittelsbach,  398 
Otway,  Thos.,  74,  210 
Ovid,  25 
Oxford  Sausage,  The,  199 

Pain  and  Patience,  84 
Palamon  and  Arcite,  28,  215 
Palgrave,  F.  T.,  57,  277 
Pamela,  252 
Paradise   Lost,    50,    52,   55-57, 

104,    no,    129,  145,    147,  148, 

151,  217.  375 
Paradise  Regained,  147,  148 
Parliament    of    Sprites,    The, 

344,  365 
Parnell,  Thos.,  58,  61,  177,  186, 

210 
Parzival,  64 

Pastoral  Ballad,  A.,  138 
Pastoral    in    the    Manner    of 

Spenser,  A.,  85 
Pastoral  Ode,  A..  133 
Pastorals  (Philips'),  80 
Pastorals  (Pope's),  57,  112,  193, 

215,  216 
Pater,  Walter,  7,  8,  16 
Paul  and  Virginia,  22,  112 
Pearch's  Collection,    159,    182, 

185 
Peck,  F.,  149 

Pellissier,  George,  35,  44, 61,  65 
Pepys,  Saml.,  283,  291 
Percy  FohoMS.,  The,  288,  290- 

93 
Percy,    Thos.,   186,     196,    212, 

235,    246,    272,    284,  306,  319, 

326,  383,  387,  422.     See  also 

Reliques. 
Perigrine  Pickle,  139 
Perle.  The,  189 
Perry,  T.   S.,  7,  163,    176,  211, 

212,  251,  337 
Persiles  and  Sigismonda,  244 
Peter  Bell,  299 
Petrarca,  Francesco,  29 
Peveril  of  the  Peak,  420 
Pfarrers  Tochter,  Des,  396 
Phelps,  W.  L.,  84,  85,  191,  197, 

283,  297,  329 


Index.  449 

Philander,  85  Preface  to   Pope's  Shakspere, 

Philantheus,  85  72 

Philips,  Ambrose,  80,  102,  284  Prelude,  The,  304 

Philips,  Edward,  67,  80  Price,  Richard,  205 

Philips,  Jno.,  104,  124  Prior,  Matthew,  35,  57,  63,  84, 

Phillimore's  Life  of  Lyttelton,  159,  2gi,  295,  296,  382 

74.  108  Prioresse  Tale,  The,  279,  342 

Phcenix,  The,  241  Progress  of  Envy.  The,  85,  91 

Pieces    of     Ancient     Popular  Progress  of  Poesy,  The,  173 

Poetry,  293  Progress    of    Romance,    The, 

Pilgrim's  Progress,  The,  5  243-45 

Pindar,  35,  54,  89  Prologue    at  the    Opening  of 

Pitt,  Christopher,  85  Drury  Lane,  59,  70 

Pitt,  Wm.,  90,  132,  133  Proud  Maisie,  277 

Pizarro,  400  Psalm  XLIL,  84 

Plato,  42,  47  Psyche,  85 

Pleasures  of   Hope,   The,  142,  Pugin,  A.  N.  W.,  234 

143  Pure,   Ornate    and    Grotesque 

Pleasures  of  Imagination,  The,  Art,  17 

124,  139-42,  157  Pursuits  of  Literature,  393 

Pleasures  of  Melancholy,  The,  Pye,  H.  J.,  392 

142,  156-58,  160,  161,  194 

Pleasures  of  Memory,  The,  142  Quarles,  Francis,  164 
Poe,  Edgar  A.,    202,  356,  390, 

403  Racine.  J.  B.,  38,  44,  65.  379 

Poem  in  Praise  of  Blank  Verse,  Radcliffe,  Anne,  232,  237,  249- 

217  64,402,408,409,411,421,423 

Poems  after  the  Minnesingers,  Rambler,  The,  97,  287,  288,  353 

375  Ramsay,  Allan,  61,  79,  284,  286, 

Poems  after  Walther  von  der  297,  300 

Vogelweide,  375  Rape  of  the  Lock.  The,  36,  220 

Pope,  Alexander,  33,  36,  39,  41,  Rapin,  Rene.  49 

47.  50-54.  56-59,  61,  63,  65,  66,  Rasselas,  186 

69,    72,    75,  77-79,  92,  93,  99,  Rauber,  Die.     See  Robbers. 

102,  105,  108,  111-13,  115.  120,  Reeve,  Clara,  241-45,  247.  249- 

121,  126,    129,    136,    149,   150,  64,  423 

154.    157,    159.    162,  163,  193,  Regnier,  Mathurin,  38 

210,  212-20,  228,  235,  265,  382,  Reliques   of    Ancient   English 

383,  388  Poetry,  139, 188,  190, 206.  209, 

Popular    Ballads    and    Songs  211,223,265,274,278,287-302, 

(Jamieson),  292  317,  346,  362,  369,  376,  423 

Popular    Tales    of    the    West  Remorse,  420 

Highlands.  322,  323,  325  Report  of  the  Committee  of  the 

Porter,  Jane,  252,  371  Highland  Society  on  Ossian, 

Portuguese  Letters,  The,  22  319 

Prajlectiones    de   Sacra    Poesi  Resolution  and  Independence, 

Hebraeorum,  387  339 

Preface    to    Johnson's    Shaks-  Retirement,  305 

pere,  70  Revenge,  The,  353 


45° 


Index. 


Revival  of  Ballad    Poetry   in 

the  Eighteenth  Century,  290 
Revolt  of  Islam,  The,  5 
Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  202,  303 
Richardson,  Saml.,  31,  32,  40, 

76,  252,  421 
Riddles    Wisely     Expounded, 

270 
Ridley,  G.,  85 

Rime  of  Sir  Thopas,  The,  28 
Rising  in  the  North,  The,  278 
Ritson,  Joseph,    188,   205,  246, 

287,  290,  293,  294,  301,  423 
Ritter  Toggenburg,  386 
Robbers,  The,  385,  391, 402,  417, 

418,  420 
Robin  Hood  and  the  Monk,  273, 

278,  283 
Robin  Hood  and  the  Old  Man, 

292 
Robin   Hood  and  the  Potter, 

273 
Robin     Hood     Ballads,     The, 

281-83,  301 
Robin  Hood  (Ritson's),  292 
Robinson  Crusoe,  5,  26 
Rogers,  Saml.,  142,  181 
Rokeby,  277 
RoUa,  400,  409 
Rolls    of     St.    Bartholomew's 

Priory,  The,  358 
Roman  de  la  Rose,  The,  37,  64 
Romance,  390 
Romance  of  the  Forest,  The, 

250,  253,  255,  256 
Romancero,  The,  64 
Romantic     and     Classical    in 

English  Literature,  The,  102 
Romantic  Tales,  409 
Romanticism  (Pater).  7 
Romantische  Schule,  Die,  2,  423 
Romaunt  of  the  Rose,  The,  27 
Romaunte  of  the  Cnyghte,  The, 

348 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  377 
Ronsard,  Pierre  de,  22 
Roscommon,    W.  Dillon,  Earl 

of,  47 
Ross,  Thos.,  321,  322 


Rossetti,  D.  G.,  4,  270,  272.  367, 

372,  424 
Roundabout  Papers,  252 
Rousseau,    Jean    Jacques,    31, 

112,  252,  330,  381,  423 
Rovers,  The,  402 
Rowe,  Nicholas,  210,  219,  286 
Rowley  Poems,  The,  211,  339- 

67,  424 
Rudiments     of     Anglo-Saxon 

Grammar,  192 
Rugantino,  409 
Ruins  of  Netley  Abbey,  The, 

182 
Ruins  of  Rome,  The,  144,  145 
Ruskin,  Jno.,  26,  34,  102,  255 
Rymer,  Thos.,  49,  62,  70 
Reyse  of  Peyncteynge  yn  Eng- 

lande.  The,  349 

Sachs,  Hans,  381 
Sadduceismus      Triuniphatus, 

408 
Sagen  der  Vorzeit,  418 
Sangers  Fluch,  Der,  275 
Saint  Alban's  Abbey,  262 
Sainte-Beuve,  C.  A,  56 
Sainte  Palaye,  J.  B.  de  la  C, 

221,  222,  374 
St,    Irvine     the    Rosicrucian, 

403 
Saint  Lambert,  C.  F.,  106 
St.  Leon,  403 

St.  Pierre,  J.  H.  B.  de,  112 
Saintsbury,  Geo.,  iii,  131 
Saisons,  Les,  106 
Sally  in  our  Alley,  57 
Salvator  Rosa,  255 
Sammlung    Deutscher    Volks- 

lieder,  418 
Samson  Agonistes,  148,  184 
"  Saturday  Papers,"  Addison's, 

148 
Schelling,  F.  W.  J.  von,  387 
Scherer,    Wilhelm,    300,      374, 

376,  380,  382,  394 
Schiller,  J.  C.  F.   von,  11,  76, 

379,  384-87,  391,  401,  409,  419, 
420 


Index.  451 

I    Schlegel,   A.   W.    von,    14,    73,  Shenstone,  Wm.,  75,  84,  91,  97, 

301,  377.  384.  392  98,  102,  103,  no,  127,  130-39, 

Schmidt,  Erich,  382,  392  151,    152,    159,  162,    168,  184, 

Schone  Helena,  Die,  385  186,    215,    229,  273,    2S7,  422, 

Scholar  Gypsy,  The,  408  423 

Schoolmistress,  The,  84,  91,  92,  Shepherd's  Calendar,  The,  154 

97,  104,  130,  136,  138,  362  Sheridan,  R.  B.,  76,   162,  400, 
Schopenhauer,  Arthur,  119  413,  420 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  3,  16,  24,  26,  Sheridan,  Thos.,  74 

27,  42,  94,  96,  139,  187-89,  191,  Sheringham,  Robert,  192 

200,  203,    223,   232,    234,  238,  Sicilian   Romance,    The,    250, 

248,   249,   258,   260,    262,  267,        253 

269,    277,    298-301,   333,    334.  Sidney,   Sir  Philip,  25,  71,  72, 

344.   350,  358,   359.   376.   389-        239,  274 

96,  398-400,  402,  404-06,  410,  Siegwart,  400 

411,  416-18,  420,  424  Sigurd  the  Volsung,  191 

Scottish  Songs  (Ritson's),  293  Sim,  Jno.,  94 

Scribleriad,  The,  228,  229  Sinclair,  Archibald,  325 

Scudery,  Madeleine  de,  6  Sinclair,  Sir  Jno.,  321 

Sean  Dana,  326  Sir  Cauline,  289,  290,  298 

Seasons,  The  (Mendez),  85  Sir  Charles  Grandison,  388 

Seasons,   The   (Thomson),  52,  Sir  Hugh,  279 

75.  79.   103.  105-20,  124,  170,  Sir  Lancelot  du  Lake,  278 

152,  305,  374  Sir  Patrick  Spens,  300 

Selden,  John,  283  Sister  Helen,  363 

Selections  from  Gray  (Phelps),  Sisters,  The,  270 

191  Six  Bards  of  Ossian  Versified, 
Selections       from       Newman       The,  336 

(Gates),  41,  44  Skeat,  W.  W.,  340,  355,  358-61, 
Seven  Champions  of  Christen-       364 

dom,  The,  37  Skene,  W.  F.,  314,  323 

Shadwell,  Thos.,  74  Sketches  of    Eminent  States- 
Shaftesbury,  Anthony  Ashley       men,  234 

Cooper,  Earl  of,  41,  62,  226,  Smart,  Christopher,  85 

382  Smith,  Adam,  105 

Shairp,  J.  C. ,  315  Smollett,  Tobias,  76,  139 

Shakspere  Alterations,  List  of.  Solitary  Reaper,  The,  115 

74  Somerville,  Wm.,  106,  124,  135 

Shakspere    Editions,    List    of.  Song  of  Harold  the   Valiant, 

74  196 

Shakspere  Illustrated,  70  Song  of  Ragner  Lodbrog,  197 

Shakspere,  Wm..  18,  25,  40,  50,  Song  to  ^lla,  355 

51,  63,  68-78,  89,  III,  117,  140,  Songs  of  Selma,  The,  331 

170,  171,  198,  208-10,  213,  216-  Sonnet  to  Chatterton,  370 

19,    225,    237,    298,    362,    375,  Sonnet  to  Mr.  Gray,  201 

377-80,  3S3,  391  Sonnet  to  Schiller,  419 

Shelley,  Mary,  403,  406  Sonnet  to    the   River   Lodon, 

Shelley,  P.  B.,  5,  43,  107,  241,        161 

362,  370,  372,  403,  406  Sophocles,  3,  19,  241,  379 


452  Index. 

Sophonisba,  75  Strawberry  Hill,   173,  179,  229, 
Sorrows  of  Werther,  The,  31,        230,  232,  234,  236,  340 

330-32,  399.  423  Sturm  von  Borberg,  399 

Sotheby,  Wm.,  382  Suckling,  Sir  Jno.,  57 

Southey,  Robert,  206,  299,  350,  Sugar  Cane,  The,  124 

355,  358,  368,  398,  419  Sullivan,  Wm.  R.,  314,  325 

Southwell,  Robert,  41  Sweet    William's    Ghost,    279, 
Spaniards  in  Peru,  The,  400,        280,  295,  300,  394 

409  Swift,    Jonathan,   40,   42,    162, 
Specimens  of    Ancient  Sculp-       382 

ture,  189  Swinburne,  A.  C,  35,  168 

Specimens    of    Early    English  Syr  Gawaine,  293 

Poets,  301  Syr  Martyn,  95,  96 

Specimens  of  the  Welsh  Bards,  System  of  Runic  Mythology, 

195  191 

Spectator,  The,  35,  37,  42,  49, 

51,  55,  62,  120,  126,  139,  141,  Taine,  H.  A.,  302,  316 

148,  178,  227,  284.  353,  377  Tale  of  a  Tub,  42 

Speght's  Chaucer,  360  Tales  of  Terror,  409,  417 

Spence,  Joseph,  132  Tales  of  Wonder,  404,  409,  416 
Spencer,  W.  R.,  392,  394  -18 

Spenser,    Edmund,  16,  25,  33,  Talisman,  The,  188 

37,  63,  68,69,  77-101,  129,  151,  Tam  Lin,  268,  279,  295,  417 

154,    157,   159,   163,    170,  198,  Tam  o'Shanter,  187,  360 

199,  212,    213,    216,    2ig,  222,  Tannhiiuser,  268 

224-26,  235,  244,  265,  279,  304,  Tasso,    Torquato,    25,   49,    50, 
359.  371  170,  219,  222-26 

Spleen,  The,  104,  136  Tate,  Nahum,  74 

Splendid  Shilling,  The,  104  Tatler,  The,  62 

Squire  of  Dames,  The,  85,  91  Taylor,  Jeremy,  40 

Stanley,  J.  T.,  392  Taylor,  Wm.,  376,  391-98,  417- 
State   of    German    Literature,        18 

The,  401  Tea    Table    Miscellany,    The, 
Stedman,  E.  C,  162  284,  297 

Steevens,  Geo.,  32  Temora,  309,  313,  314,  316,  321, 
Stello,  372  323,  338 

Stephen,  Leslie,  32-34,  40,  102,  Tempest,  The,  70,  76,  171,  215 

234,  237,  327  Temple,  Sir  Wm.,  69,  120,  192, 
Sterne,  Lawrence,  31,  32,  252  197 

Stevenson,  R.  L.,  258  Tennyson,   Alfred,    18,  27,  35, 
Stillingfleet,  Benjamin,  53,  161        92,  93,  146,  200,  270,  281 

Stimmen  der  Volker,  300,  337,  Thackeray,  W.  M.,  56,  80,  252, 

416  254 

Stolberg,    Friedrich    Leopold,  Thaddeus  of  Warsaw,  243,  252 

Count,  376,  377  Thales,  85 

Storie    of    William    Canynge,  Theagenes  and  Chariclea,  244 

The,  355  Theatrum  Poetarum,  67,  81 

Stranger,  The,  400  Theocritus,  36 

Stratton  Water,  299  Thesaurus  (Hicks'),  192,  193 


Index.  453 

Thomas  a  Kempis,  64  Ueber    naive    und    sentimen- 

Thomas  Rymer,  268  talische  Dichtung,  11,  387 

Thompson,  Wm.,  84  Ueber  Ossian  und  die  Lieder 

Thomson,  Jas.,  52,   74,  75,  79,  alter  Volker,  338 

84,    85,  92-95.  97,  98,^102-19;  Uhland,  Ludwig,  384 

124,  133-36,  142,  151,  157,  159,  Ulysses,  18,  35 

168,    184,    198,  215,    235,  251,  Unconnected      Thoughts      on 

302,  303,  305,  374,  384,  422  Gardening,  127,  132 

Thomson,  Jas.  (2d),  162  Universal  Prayer,  The,  41 

Thoreau,  H.  D. ,  107  Unnatural   Flights  in   Poetry, 

Tieck,  Ludwig,  22,  377,  384  47 

To  Country  Gentlemen  of  Eng-  Upton,  John,  85 

land,  85  Uz,  J.  P.,  106 
Todtentanz,  Der,  386 

To  Helen,  202  Vanity  of  Dogmatizing,  The, 

To  Melancholy,  251  408 

Tom  Jones,  186,  263  Vathek,  403,  405 

Tom  Thumb,  285  Vergil,  25,  37,  49,  50,  55,  no, 

"  Too  Late  I  Stayed,"  392  223,  285,  335 

Torfseus  Thormodus,  191  Verses  to  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds, 

To     the     Nightingale    (Lady  202 

Winchelsea),  61  Verses  Written  in  1748,  133 

To  the  Nightingale  (Mrs.  Rad-  Vicar      of     Wakefield,      The, 

cliffe),  251  209 

To  the  Nightingale.    See  Odes.  Vigny,   Alfred  Victor,    Comte 

To  the  River  Otter,  161  de,  372,  373 

Tournament,  The,  348,  365  Villehardouin,  Geofifroy  de,  27, 

Town  and  Country  Magazine,  64 

The,  346,  352  Villon,  Frangois,  64,  216 

Tragedies    of    the    Last    Age  Vindication  (Tyrwhitt's)  359 

Considered,  The,  70  Virtuoso,    The,    84,     91,     14I;. 

Tressan,  L,  E.  de  L.,  Comte  22S 

de,  381  Vision,  The  (Burns),  334 

Triumph  of  Isis,  The,  199  Vision,  The  (Croxall),  84 

Triumph  of  Melancholy,  The,  Vision  of  Patience,  The,  84 

305  Vision  of  Solomon,  The,  84 

Triumphs  of  Owen,  The,  195  Voltaire,  F.  M.  A.  de,  214,  216, 

Tristan  und  Isolde,  3,  64  237,  379,  381,  382 

Trivia,  35  Von  Arnim,    Achim     (L.   J.), 

Troilus  and  Cresseide,  28  384 

True     Principles     of     Gothic  Voragine,  Jacobus  de,  3 

Architecture,  234  Vorlesungen  iiber  dramatische 

Turk  and  Gawin,  The,  293  Kunst  und  Literatur,  14 

Tv^ra  Corbies,  The,  275  Voss,  J.  H.,  375 
Two  Sisters,  The,  270,  279 

Tyrwhitt,  Thos.,  63,   188,  211,  Wackenroder,  W.  H.,  384 

213,    246,    301,     355-57.     359.  Wagner,  H.  L.,  379 

423  Waking  of  Angantyr,  The,  192 

Tytler,  Sir  A.  F.,  391,  419  Wallenstein,  385,  419 


454 


Index. 


Waller,  Edmund,  38,  39,  52,  53, 
80,  216 

Walpole,  Horace,  32,  89,  120, 
122,  129,  130,  135,  145,  159, 
166,  173,  178,  179,  181,  229-43, 
249-55,  258,  286,  306,  336,  337, 
349-52,  354,  383,  401,  408,  417, 
422 

Walsh,  Wm.,  50,  53 

Walther  von  der  Vogelweide, 
64 

"Waly,  Waly,"274,  300 

Wanton  Wife  of  Bath,  The, 
301 

Warburton,  Wm.,  237 

Wardlaw,  Lady,  286 

Ward's  English  Poets,  53,  iii, 
131,  169,  364 

Warton,  Joseph,  32,  75,  118, 
142,  149,  151-53,  155.  156,  160, 
163,  168,  171,  185,  193,  197-99, 
206,  207,  212-20,  223,  226,  262, 
302,  355,  375,  383.  387,  422, 
423 

Warton,  Thos.,  Jr.,  32,  36,  53, 
75,  84,  85,  99-101,  150,  151, 
156-58.  161,  163,  168,  171, 
194,  197-207,  211,  213,  221, 
224,  226,  245,  251,  260,  291, 
293,  294,  302,  356,  359,  375, 
387,  403,  422,  423 

Warton,  Thos.,  Sr. ,  85,  197 

Waverley  Novels,  The,  188,  258, 
262,  400,  422 

Way,  G.  L.,  301 

Weber's  Metrical  Romances, 
188 

Weber,  Veit,  400,  418 

Webster,  Jno.,  66 

Werner,  421 

Wesley,  Jno.,  31 

West,  Gilbert,  84,  85,  89-91,  98, 
126,  133,  151,  160,  193,  194 

Whately,  Thos.,  122 

Whistle,  The.  334 

White  Doe  of  Rylstone,  The, 
184 

Whitefield,  Geo.,  31 

Whitehead,  Wm.,  84,  197 


Whittington     and     his     Cat, 

273 
Wieland,  403 
Wieland,  C.  M.,  106,  377,  378, 

381,  397 
Wife    of    Usher's    Well,   The, 

269,  279 
Wilde  Jager,  Der,  391 
Wild    Huntsman,    The,    404, 

416 
Wilkie,  Wm.,  85 
Wilhelm  Meister,  384,  387 
Wilhelm  Tell,  385 
William  and  Helen,  391,  398, 

404 
Willie   Drowned    in    Yarrow, 

170 
Willie's  Lady,  279 
Wilson's    Life  of    Chatterton, 

368 
Winchelsea,      Anne       Finch, 

Countess  of,   57,    61 
Winckelmann,  J.  J.,  384,  385 
Windsor    Forest,   57,    58,   215, 

220 
Winstanley,  William,  62,  69 
Winter,  ip3-io6,  142,  422 
Wither,  Geo.,  57 
Wodrow,  Jno.,  334,  335 
Wolfram      von     Eschenbach, 

64 
Wolfred  von  Dromberg,  398 
Wonders     of     the      Invisible 

World,  408 
Wood,  Anthony,  291 
Wood,  Robert,  387-89 
Worde,  Wynkyn  de,  274 
Wordsworth,  Wm.,  4,  s,  45,  58, 

103,    107,  109,    112,    115,  135, 

143-45,  160,  162,  183,  184,  218, 

220,  288-90,  298,  299,  304,  316, 

326,  328,  339,  344 
Worm,  Ole,  191,  193 
Wreck  of  the  Hesperus,  The, 

269 
Wren,    Sir    Christopher,     i2i. 

230 
Written  at  an  Inn  at  Henley, 

138 


Index.  455 

Written  at  Stonhenge,  201  Young  Hunting,  279 

Written  in  Dugdale's  Monasti-  Young  Lochinvar,  277 

con,  198  Young  Waters,  300 

Yarrow  Revisited,  344  Zapolya,  420 

Yarrow  Unvisited,  298  Zastrozzi,  403 

Young,   Edward,   56,   149,  163,  Zauberlehrling,  Der,  386 

213,  387,  38S,  421  Zauberring,  Der,  4 


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